Maggie Ball

Magdalena Ball runs The Compulsive Reader web site http://www.compulsivereader.com/html. Her short stories, editorials, poetry, reviews and articles have appeared in a wide number of printed anthologies and journals including Imago, Coppertales, Drexel Journal, Midwest Book Reviews, Relix Magazine, and Thylazine, and have won a number of local and international awards for poetry and fiction. Her poetry Chapbook, Quark Soup, will be published by Picaro Press in late 2006, her non-fiction book, The Art of Assessment was published by Mountain Mist Productions in 2002, and her first novel, Sleep Before Evening is currently making the rounds of literary agents.

Planet X

UB313,

alone in icy orbit

dodging rock balls

in the Kuiper belt

knocking Pluto off its perch.

Does it help to have someone reach out

Past the painful isolation of your

Methane and rock heart

grabbing your frozen hand

from billions of miles away

Would you wake from the stupor of

your underworld prison

if Spring arrived

breathing hot air against your

immobile lips

dragging you into

the dirty chaos

of life

the deadly search

for meaning

the solar system

of your crazy Earthbound

lovers?

Or would you prefer the

sterile perfection

of distance

and mystery?