Astropoetica: In December, The City & The Sea, by N. M. Courtright

"The Night Time View of Surfers Paradise," by Richard Giles Streetlights wish away
white stars in chariots, and
she is carved from black.

How strange. How strange to
eye clouds moving east to west
above the black sea.

Beneath the eye lies
the sable soot, the chimney’s
breath a chute of night.

Reindeer burn to keep
her warm, their chariot a
fire over the sea.

And the iris will
wish to dilate. But what is
smoke and what is cloud?

The same, the same, her
breath and the star-eyed reindeer,
and the white city.

Starlights’ irises
brighten night sky with the sea’s
dead, the city’s dead.

N. M. Courtright, an Ohio native, currently resides in Austin, Texas. His poetry has recently appeared or is forthcoming in The Diagram, Caketrain, Scrivener’s Pen, Dirt, The Pebble Lake Review, and The American Drivel Review.