There is a rhinoceros beetle outside my door,
unwinding. Last night we marveled at its glossy shell

after returning from dinner, astonished by its missing leg.
It was lying on its back, ticking off the entirety of our night.

Two months and we’ve narrowly avoided meeting
each other’s parents. I feel like a new electron,

well-intentioned and waiting for discovery. Perhaps
this man will be the gift to permit an end to my waiting.

But of course, even observation can have material effect,
pinning the specimen to the board. Sometimes

I do not leave the apartment all day, watch Captain Janeway
stump about the bridge in her stiff-limbed efficacy, sporting

an updo that could make you spit. I am jealous
of her abundant certitude, knowing that who she is now

is not who she was, but her own precise descendant. 
In the show, they spend so much time trying

to get back home, but they’ve already made one among
their fellow voyagers. Today, I endeavor to wash the sheets, 

honor that which so often receives the burden of our bodies.
With the bed stripped, it is neither dirty nor clean. Merely inaccessible.

It may as well be an altar to our future, sanctifying the threshold
between what-we-are-yet-to-do and what-we-have-already-done.

I should really go out, turn the laundry over, but instead
let another episode autoplay. The beetle is still out there,

I suspect, and due to the unearned blessing of unknowing,
neither whole nor broken down, but right where we left him.

Ryan Dzelzkalns has poems appearing with Assaracus, DIAGRAM, The Offing, The Shanghai Literary Review, Tin House, and others. He received an MFA from New York University and a BA from Macalester College where he was awarded the Wendy Parrish Poetry Prize. He has worked for the Academy of American Poets and was recently a Fulbright scholar in Tokyo, where he still lives and works. Read more at RyanDz.com.

Emma Kohlmann is a prolific artist based in Western Massachusetts. Born in the Bronx, Kohlmann received a BA in Fine Arts from Hampshire College. In addition to creating zines, art books, posters, record covers, clothing, and jewelry, Kohlmann’s work has been exhibited widely in the United States and abroad. Kohlmann has had solo shows at Chandran Gallery in San Francisco, New Image Gallery in Los Angeles, Nationale in Portland, Jack Hanley Gallery in New York City, and V1 Gallery in Copenhagen, as well as group shows at the Portland Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art Tucson in Arizona, Galerie Kornfeld in Berlin, and Kit Gallery in Toyko, among others.