Jessica Rae Bergamino is the author of several chapbooks, most recently The Desiring Object (Sundress Publications, 2015). Individual poems may be found or are forthcoming in Gulf Coast, The Journal, West Branch, Poetry Daily, Slice, and elsewhere. She is a PhD student in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Utah, where she is a poetry editor for Quarterly West.

DEAD LETTER OFFICE

Excerpt From Voyager One’s Private Correspondence with Carl Sagan

By JESSICA RAE BERGAMINO

“Nature is unsentimental. Death built in. Fake life, fake country. Fake becoming, new dawn, the old one, too.”