Siún Carden

Coordinated universal time

A woman freezes on her son’s computer screen
in an American living room. He’s ten.
He watched her leave the planet, on top of
a controlled explosion. She chose to do this.

It looks like maybe we must choose to do this —
float, haloed by each individual hair,
trying to duet over satellite link,
silver flutes trilling up and down.

There will be no real-time comms
on the way to Mars. Like going to sea
not long ago. Hard to think of when adrift
in snacks and sofa cushions, intertwined.

NASA likes its travellers to have families
so they have a reason to come back.
The boy playing Grade 2 flute is an anchor.
The boy playing Grade 2 flute is part of the mission.

NASA sends a staffer to video a birth, for a father
who’ll watch later from the space station. Up there,
AM to PM, his every move beams live to an open-plan
office. Sometimes a worker turns a camera to the wall.

Titanic Cruise

The tourists want the ship to stop
on the spot, the minute it began
a hundred years ago.

Biodegradable wreaths drop
quietly, to sink towards the wreck.
A lot of fuss for one loss, some crew think.

The captain reads a transcript
on the Tannoy. As agreed,
the decks go dark
till nothing shines but stars
and emergency exits.

Ten minutes. Then walkways blaze
and engines moan alive. A mate decides
to check the ice report — a passing thought,
but too much fate to tempt after all that.

There’s nothing there of course.
The future’s clear. For endless miles
and endless months, as far as we can see
nothing’s coming for us.

Siún Carden grew up in County Down and moved from Belfast to Shetland in 2016. Some of her poems can be found in the Glasgow Review of Books, Magma, The Tangerine, Northwords Now and The New Shetlander. Her first pamphlet, ‘Tract’, was published by The Well Review in 2023. She is a recipient of a 2024 New Writers Award for poetry from the Scottish Book Trust.

Siún wrote the following about her poems:

‘Coordinated Universal Time’ is named after the time zone used, somewhat arbitrarily, on the International Space Station, and was inspired by Ido Mizrahy’s documentary ‘Voyage to Mars: The Longest Goodbye’, about how NASA is preparing astronauts and their families for future journeys to Mars. This poem is about our cackhanded, maybe hopeless but persistent efforts to communicate or synchronise with each other over what feel like increasing distances, in resistance to Elon Musk-ish hubris.

‘Titanic Cruise’ is about another journey, which I’m almost as bewildered by people’s eagerness to take part in. I can't imagine spending a holiday re-creating the Titanic's fatal voyage, but some people do, and I'm sure I enjoy things that are just as bizarre. The poem wonders at our fascination with certain fears, versus the silent, terrifying things we’re almost incapable of paying attention to. I think that saying the scary thing is one of poetry’s major powers.