Slowing Time by Erica Reid
My husband is a podcast guy. He says
that scientists believe now climate change
is starting to affect the length of days:
for the first time in a geologic age
Earth’s molten core is slackening its spin,
our day-long cycles longer by a breath.
It’s slowing time, he says — then, earbuds in,
returns to stories of our planet’s death.
The sunset takes its time. My bedroom clock
sounds wrong somehow, as though it overheard—
for every other tik it adds a tok.
The second hand’s sharp promises are slurred.
The world turns like it’s hurt. We plug our ears
as minutes break as hours break as years
Erica Reid is the author of Ghost Man on Second, winner of the Donald Justice Poetry Prize (Autumn House Press, 2024). Erica’s poems appear in Rattle, Cherry Tree, Colorado Review, and more. Visit her at ericareidpoet.com
Praise for the winning sonnet, “Slowing Time”:
In a field full of strong contenders, “Slowing Time” stood out for its combination of ingenuity and melancholy. The poem starts with an utterly contemporary remark—”My husband is a podcast guy”—and ends up brooding on a “hurt” as vast as time itself. It’s expansive, yet economical; its only repetitive phrases (“the length of days”…”our day-long cycles longer”) slyly illustrate the elasticity of time. It plays wittily with the sonnet form: the “turn” turns into a comment on the way “the world turns,” while the ending, which breaks off just before the word “break,” both completes the form and leaves it incomplete. None of this is mere cleverness for its own sake. The poem radiates a genuine sadness, born of the climate crisis but also linked, perhaps, to the speaker’s marriage. I know I’ll be revisiting it in future “hours” and “years,” no matter how far the world spins off its groove.
~Austin Allen, Judge
