Stephen S. Mills
In Life Scientists Confirm the Sixth Extinction Is Underway
And I remember all those books
on dinosaurs I kept on my shelf
as a kid and that box of bones—plastic—
that I would take out—excavate—
rebuild—flesh not included.
And remember the night sky?
That telescope I got for Christmas.
How I tried to learn the constellations—
make sense of the vastness,
which was wide and dark
from the ground in Indiana—
my grandparents’ farm.
But today I’m in my apartment
in New York—the 24th floor—
there’s snow on the ground below—
a park named after a poet—ice hangs
from the museum next door—
a found object—and then I read
about extinction—ours—
how it’s underway—inevitable—
which feels like something
I once would have brushed off
as hysteria but now feels more true
than false—and that number:
six. A reminder: everything stops—
everything vanishes.
Stephen S. Mills reads “In Life Scientists Confirm the Sixth Extinction Is Underway”
Stephen S. Mills (he/they) is the author of the Lambda Award-winning book He Do the Gay Man in Different Voices (2012) as well as A History of the Unmarried (2014) and Not Everything Thrown Starts a Revolution (2018) all from Sibling Rivalry Press. His work has appeared in The American Poetry Review, Columbia Poetry Review, The Antioch Review, PANK, The New York Quarterly, The Los Angeles Review, The Rumpus, and others. Two of his books were placed on the Over the Rainbow List compiled yearly by the American Library Association. He is also the author of the plays Waiting for Manilow and Is That All There Is? He lives in New York City. Website: www.stephensmills.com