Frontier’s End: A New Poem by George Sandifer-Smith

I wept at the cloud-shore when I saw fractures,
fractals of burnt orange and yellow splitting my home,
under a pale blue moon slashed with black scars
far darker than anything but imagination.
She – they – were safe. But home…
that was sheer memory now.

I had stared into nine eyes,
nine sparkling coals mid-diamond-transformation
and watched them close, open, close, open, close,
close close close
as exoskeleton broke, sound of chicken bones,
of crabs beneath stones held by a curious child.
The eyes did not shine or look on in shock.
They must have known they had more on the way.
Forty-nine minutes later, we retreated from what was left
of the rubble-strewn Tannhaüser Front.

Our blood was an invite here.
The soldiers from that day. The miners from Enceladus,
their barriers crushed, their houses filled
with volcanic ice, screams frozen and shattered.
They were relentless for our world,
so we gave it to them, after the exodus.
Then we scorched the Earth,
her oceans dried, her bones bleached.

Bio: George Sandifer-Smith is a Welsh writer and postgraduate student at Aberystwyth University. He has self-published one novelette, Pop Idle, in 2013, and his first children’s book, Cholloo’s Birthday, based on Manx mythology, was published by Lily Publications in 2014. He is the editor of the Cancer Research poetry anthology, The Wait, and also co-edited the 2014 poetry and fiction anthology, Make Time for Aberystwyth. His poetry has previously been published in the Cadaverine.