Cassandra Moss

two poems

When I think about the future, I think about the past

What’s music but an agreement between our ears
and the sound waves anyway, 
she said

She said
what’s wrong with recreating 
many other agreements like it
across many other types of life

Because people already live amongst
sinister architectures
they come and go

They compete professionally
or as amateurs
for every bit of permanence

But amateur, don’t forget,
just means a lover

And love is the thing we think back on
as if we knew it
as if we definitely had it and
lost it

When we were ripped from some
distant utopia
or other

Left to search all
the agreements
and disagreements

of the biological

and the anatomical

and the artificial

So let’s manufacture consent
she said
for the mechanical Prometheus 
to make visible the 

Gossamer vagueries 
we all assume must be
conspiring with one another 

to shield the unbearable mystery 

of our souls

Two islands

Sometimes I wonder if the exact thoughts I think
Could be the same thoughts using different words.
Could I be on the other island, on the other side of the sea,
Looking over to the opposite piece of land
Missing my home with a mix of fondness and revulsion,
or would it always be more than that
In the other tongue?
Would the sadness and anger of what could’ve been
Reformulate the things I’m able to think
And mean I have to understand myself differently
From this me now on this island watching the water
Creep up on the shore with the freedom to imagine
The oppression of these islanders while knowing
Many of the people on my island have never known
Such thoughts exist at all.

Cassandra Moss was born in Manchester, England. She studied English with Film at King's College, London and subsequently worked in the film industry and as an ESL teacher. Since completing an MPhil in Linguistics at Trinity College, Dublin, she’s been living and writing by the sea. Her writing has been published or is forthcoming in numerous journals, including The Passage Between, Posit, Sunspot Lit, Beyond Words Literary Magazine, KAIROS Literary Magazine, The Bangalore Review, Drunk Monkeys, Goat’s Milk Magazine, Interpret Magazine, The Write Launch, Causeway Lit, SPECTRA Poets, and New York Quarterly. She has been nominated for Best of the Net and was long listed for the 2021 Fish Poetry Prize.