Do Unicorns Dream of Electric Virgins?

Inspired by The Hunt of the Unicorn Tapestry

Stammer of leaves on the breeze: some misguided taste
for verisimilitude. Some curatorial fad.

I'd seen the tapestries, or reproductions, at least. Then
the shock of the flesh. That flesh, labile, auratic.

UN15. We call her Eunice. Forget my great-grandfather
shuddering about those blasphemous sheep. She's a kiss—

Smudged Madonna in remote access, a sun,
a body blazoned, recumbent before the draughtsman

A steep-peaked cliff in winter, a joke recycled
back to earnest. My grandmother collapsed into fame

On a National Geographic cover. Was it the Last Royal
Bengal tiger? The penultimate narwhal? A woman

Oblivious to cameras, crying on cold meat. It was a grief
that cooked well, and the world ate it. Eunice wags

Her goatee. For a textbook abomination she's
a little modest, you understand; the ethics debates

Roll off her smooth back like sunlight. Who knows
what those proprioceptive sensors are capable of?

We gaze at each other, Eunice and I, our weekly
conversation. We're plotting to overthrow the King.

—Ishita Basu Mallik

Astronomy in the Seventeenth Century

Inspired by Jan Vermeer's The Astronomer

You sit in a kimono-like silk robe,
observe the Dragon, Hercules, the Bear
and Lyra on your multicolored globe,
and eavesdrop as they speak of an elsewhere

beyond your ken. A manual on the table
is open to the saying, "inspiration
from God," a practicable guide to enable
a man to learn the stars and navigation.

How dare you go against the sacred scheme,
commit attempts to learn about the earth,
the nature of the suns and worlds that beam
their facts to prying scientists? A dearth

of hands-on research is what they expect.
Is that the reason you've no telescope?
God's frightened His whole system could be wrecked
if you don't wash your notions out with soap.

The globe now, in slow motion, detonates,
the constellations flung every which way.
You fall as your gray matter vacillates
between the urge to blaspheme or to pray.

—Martin Elster

Inspired by The Stanford Torus

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .Collision reCourse

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . spewing blue
. . . . . . . . . . . . . & green our vortex
. . . . . . . . . . . .emits another reminder
. . . . . . . . . . . . . of what
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . we had
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . before
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . sweeping us into
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .that lakeside location
. . . . . . . . . . . . beside perfect alpine trees
. . . . . . . . . . .we view the pre-collider scene
. . . . . . . . . .knowing this flash of technicolour
. . . . . . . . . . .torture lasts. . . . ten seconds
. . . . . . . . . . . . no more. . . . . . .before
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . we will move
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .on through our
. . . . . . . . . . . .grey days
. . . . . . . . . we watch them escalate under
. . . . . . . ground. . . .we see no one show con
. . . . . .cern. . . . . . . . . .we brace as the vortex
. . . .splits. . . . .apart. . . . . to. . spit. . . us. . out. . . again

—Jessica Rainey