by Rachel Trousdale

For CAM

The Milky Way, like crumbs on top
              of a vast galette—studded
with ripe planets, like figs—
	      how you have enjoyed
everything you taste;
	      as you pass Alpha Centauri,
please, find a radio signal
	       sent to us by the sulphur beings
of the horsehead nebula,
	       and into their code add instructions
for tasting this last bottle
	       of the wine you left behind
	       .
	       .
	       .

Rachel Trousdale is an associate professor of English at Framingham State University. Her poems have appeared in the Yale Review, the Nation, RHINO, and Diagram, among other places. Rachel is the author of the poetry chapbook, Antiphonal Fugue for Marx Brothers, Elephant, and Slide Trombone, and her latest critical book, The Joking Voice: Humor and Empathy in Twentieth-Century American Poetry, is forthcoming from Oxford University Press. Find Rachel on Twitter @rvtrousdale.