daughter particles | Brooke Larson

Brooke Larson is a writer and performer. A book of her ecological essays, Pleasing Tree, is available from Arc Pair Press, and a chapbook of her poem-plays, Origami Drama, from Quarterly West. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University and a PhD in English from the University of Louisiana. Brooke has lived and worked in Albania, The Czech Republic, Finland, Israel, and Spain. Currently she lives in Arizona, where the Sonoran Desert makes her swoon.    On Being Alone Nearby   Baby says he wants to go to Mars.  I don’t know how much he means it.  But his eyes are Jupiter to a T, I thought the first time & ever since I saw him, down to the bronze fleck & swirl. I scratch Baby’s scalp, keep three fingernails long to touch him better.  On Mars his long hair would weigh next to nothing, glint golder more than ever next to sun.  On Mars Baby would be a colonizer of the dead.  Not that word, he says.  The unborn the unlived.  Baby picks up a house ant on his long woo