Safety Notice

We regret to inform you
that a cat chewed through a wire in the
particle accelerator again.
The physicists all joked that the feline
would find cations in the data.

Please stand clear of any
radioactive kitty litter,
the containment team is working
to neutralize the catnip
growing around the research facility.

We recommend a Geiger counter in hand
and pet cat in tow, for how else can you tiptoe through
multiple dimensions and quantum states?
Please poke around the standard model
with your expert particle hunter.

You may end up with two kitties
when there was only one, or ghosts
in the solenoids when a whole litter
switches positions and suddenly Alpha Centauri
starts reporting its first sentient life: domestic cats.

Angela Acosta is a bilingual Latina poet and scholar from Florida. Her speculative poetry has or will appear in On Spec, Eye to the Telescope, Radon Journal, Space & Time, and Shoreline of Infinity. She is the author of Summoning Space Travelers (Hiraeth Books, 2023) and the forthcoming chapbook Fourth Generation Chicana Unicorn (dancing girl press, 2023).

Find more by Angela Acosta in the Author Index.