This is "Your Stay at McMurdo Station"
Outlying airport: Lung of Antarctic Peninsula
Blue Whale trap severed
Boot: in snow Inside: toes red
Biggest station on continental glacier, White wets white glass
The pole's magnetic rope: Scott died in amber noose
Free peanuts with air bag
Thought motif book cloud: Thoreau, author; Richard Byrd,
author: Walden, book; Alone, book
Cosmic synthesis ends literature


Flight passenger ventriloquism
Sky pink Vishnuesque
Holiday expenditure; twist of wallet cartilage
Soldier shepherd whip whaps Williamsfield
Sweet stewardess rhapsody, "Welcome to the Antarctic continent! Welcome to the Antarctic continent"
Academic misdemeanor, expelled to sun; Individuality ratified
Men, cold; men, cold
Skullcap: summerware; Horsejacket: winter parka


Sled dogs slip on wet ice; Queen Maud sleds on her sterling slopes;
scientists ski
A Mammoth Mountain Inn welcomes you
Ice cube skyscraper nuclear wastebasket
Sub-degrees, blue-bottom, weather instrument pops
Staying facility of more than 100 structures
King Penguin: Quacking polar bear butler
Greed utensils scrap Earth crust; Antarctic
protected by winterwear
Please, no chewing gum


Commercial status entirety: tourism
Scientific vagabonds insert your meteorological tube into the Ice Age left ventricle heart beat
"Oh Jon, isn't that white? Have you seen the
snow, Jon? Oh, is that white?"
Blue cracked mountain crag awning like pelican bill
Forehead vein beats to directional hand
Bubblescopes wipe cloud scum
Telephone wires attached to air
Chapel fireplace emits a flameless ember
Autonomous religiosity
Sun: winter guest
Snowshoe burnt


Wild, I flee
I slip through guided tour into dark voluminous shadow
Audio frequency severed by polar wind metal blade
I rush, backpack strapped
Swept by glacier tongue; invisible under midnight sun
Tour guide guest reception blinded by
unexpected equator heat wave
White halo of invisibility
Individual reason: soul to contemplate- cabin in woods outdated; Inspiration spit: igloo on icecap
Purchased Ice Box contraption $149


Build sequential blocks in twelve-row circle pattern: classic
parabolic shape like planet severed half
Epistemological function of holiday diatribe:
create active words without verbs
Blow horn sound: near success
I, the hero, reach South Pole Norwegian flag by
muse-inspired hot air balloon
I, Defoe damaging shipwrecked escapist
I, unnationalized explorer settle claim qualms
I, Samuel Richardson virtue receptrical
I, fish-breathed in need of tic-tac
I, Henry Fielding witty alter-ego
I bend clock hand and gag Mother Nature mouth


I, Luddite wizard toppled by mechanistic Descarte claw
Lunar eclipse, solar eclipse, rays of midnight sun
cast upon my head
Scalp evaporated
Brain sponge neurons electrochemical wires like spider thread
firework patterns over planet surface
Illuminating logitudical degree distance from Atman, true self
Being free
Temperature plain wields frothy air
Leaf unfolds over red sky waves
Human destiny fizzles on Earthpoint holiday cocktail



Eric Karl Anderson is the recipient of the Pearl Street Publishing first book award for his forthcoming novel "Enough." His short fiction has been published in the Blithe House Quarterly and is forthcoming in the Harrington Gay Men's Fiction Quarterly and Tatlin's Tower. He lives in London.
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