As more and more aunts and uncles meet their Maker,
I think of Crisis on Infinite Earths, 12-issue crossover saga,
multiversal catastrophe with a high body count despite supers
who try to prevent the inevitable demise of planets;
deaths of innocent civilians, teammates, and friendly other-Earth
doppelgangers by travelling to the dawn of creation
where an enormous hand rises from primordial soup and mist
to birth and cradle star clusters. As unrepentant winter besieges
with a string of cloudy days on our Earth, my migraines and melancholy
accumulate. I ponder if cousins, nieces, and nephews
will rediscover me in poetry after I’m gone, or will I remain forever
shelved, gathering dust, forgotten like that Earth 2 Wonder Woman
always as beautiful as Aphrodite, wiser than Athena, swifter than Mercury,
and stronger than Hercules—she who ages backwards when
hit by death ray, reverts to statuette, disperses into wind-blown
clay on Paradise Island as if she’d never existed.
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Rita Maria Martinez is a Pushcart-nominated poet who writes about chronic migraine. Rita’s collection—The Jane and Bertha in Me (Kelsay Books)—was a finalist for the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize. Rita’s work appears in The Best American Poetry Blog, Ploughshares, Pleiades, and Tupelo Quarterly. Her poetry is also featured in CLMP’s 2023 Disability Pride Month reading list.