berlin lit

Sarah Law

 

My mother has outlived Lieutenant Uhura

 

by six months and an English summer

although she could never compete in astrophysics

 

or the hailing frequencies between green-

goddesses and the barrel-chested captain

 

Uhura kissed just once under duress 

although it was always Officer Spock

 

she really held the line for – my mother, now

nonagenarian, still recalls the formulae

 

for salt and water, symbols for silver 

and gold, like the wedding ring

 

she lately misplaced. A female chemist

in the 1950s was a rare and charming thing.

 

The carbon-based life forms you find in time

and space never last as long as your stars.

 

All those miniskirts and mustard jumpsuits

jiving like particles in a placenta, my mother – 

 

unafraid of ridicule, unafraid of war,

holding her own in the heart’s high beam.