Poem by Keith Gaboury

Gecko Sex in Space

“The geckos set off to space on a journey of sexual exploration as part of a study
on weightlessness and reproduction. ISTC (The Institute of Biomedical Problems)
has been investigating the subject since the 1960s.”
Deng, Boer. “The Sad Conclusion to the Tale of the Sex Geckos Lost in Space.”
Slate. 2 Sept. 2014.

I’m a space gecko. I’m a space gecko
on a satellite

spinning in the intimacy of freefall
where copulation is on the menu
with my brother Joe — what now?

Yes, my womb must gestate,
my womb must form a squamatic

daughter without the bother
of an atmosphere’s sweep of strength.

If her birthplace is not earthbound,
is her birth certificate
extraterrestrial?

Joe strides over
to stare at a failure of bones —

where is the split fork
of our ancestors’ skeleton structure?

We toss our spawn —
a reject of misshapen proportion —

into the airlock
and go missionary into the morning

Keith Gaboury graduated with a M.F.A. in creative writing from Emerson College in 2013. My poems have appeared in Write From Wrong Online Literary Magazine, Oddball Magazine, Boston Poetry Magazine, and Barely South Review. In 2011, he co-founded a social justice-themed online literary magazine, Words Apart. While spending his days as a preschool teacher, he spends his nights working on a manuscript of science fiction/fantasy-themed poems.

Ira Joel Haber was born and lives in Brooklyn. He is a sculptor, painter, writer, book dealer,photographer and teacher. His work has been seen in numerous group shows bothin the USA and Europe and he has had 9 one man shows including several retrospectives of his sculpture. His work is in the collections of The Whitney Museum Of American Art, New York University, The Guggenheim Museum, The Hirshhorn Museum,The Albright-Knox Art Gallery & The Allen Memorial Art Museum. Since 2006 His paintings, drawings, photographs and collages have been published in over 230 on line and print magazines. He has received three National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, two Pollock-Krasner grants, the Adolph Gottlieb Foundation grant and, in 2010, he received a grant from Artists’ Fellowship Inc. He currently teaches art to retired public school teachers at The United Federation of Teachers program in Brooklyn.