Pavane for a Dead Princess (on Pluto)

             July 14, 2015. The New Horizons space probe, en route for over nine years, finally              passed Pluto, where a handful of Clyde W. Tombaugh's ashes was tossed from the              flyby in commemoration of his 1930 discovery.

She wonders if Clyde Tombaugh (her hero) is as pissed off as she is over his demoted discovery. Maybe he’s content with cold truth, she thinks, however it evolves. She marks the day his ashes will catapult through the dwarf’s icy belt, makes plans to be alone on top of one of the Twin Sisters, bundled with stars dying in her hair, as Pluto and its moons shimmer into view for the flyby, then roll away like snowballs. Perhaps there’s another world she might reach, she thinks, by row- boat. Or undercover. Mercy on the other side.

Ghost Pepper

Today I gave Haunted Ghost Pepper Tortilla Chips to some fellow poets—accidentally, I swear—chips made from peppers you should only touch with gloves. WTF, said the poets, tongues ablaze, lips blistering. The peppers were so ghostly nothing could cool the poets, nothing douse the devil in their throats. Some ran, some sat stoic as ghosts themselves until there was a roaring like a poem no one had ever heard. Gorgeous loud. Portrait of the Artist loud. Guinness Book of World Records loud. I said, When it gets too hot to swallow—spit it out.  

Maureen Seaton has authored seventeen poetry collections, both solo and collaborative—most recently, Fibonacci Batman: New & Selected Poems (Carnegie Mellon University Press 2013) and Caprice: Collected, Uncollected, and New Collaborations (with Denise Duhamel, Sibling Rivalry Press, 2015). Her awards include the Iowa Poetry Prize and Lambda Literary Award (both for Furious Cooking), the Audre Lorde Award (for Venus Examines Her Breast), an NEA fellowship, and two Pushcart Prizes. Her memoir, Sex Talks to Girls, also garnered a Lammy.  She teaches creative writing at the University of Miami, Florida.