My cat’s second eyelid films slowly over one eyeas a vast dust storm envelops Mars. Cease transmissionfor the moment, small bodies, from one red storm & other storms.When as a kittenher bright orange forehead glowed,some pulsar above us gained color/form/matter. We say a butterfly pumps its wings on oneside of the earth & a hurricane responds on the other.I say there is no circle of life,there is a wave & we are the soundless rover on its surface.In time, Mars will be a space we plunder.For now, the trek of our robot is heroic,but we did not name it Ulysses.Good planet for a good dog, Rover. My cat begins the twitches of REMsleep; the nearby stars bark & sail by.
NASA Rover Falls Silent
Majda Gama
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Reproduced from The Prairie Schooner Vol. 97, No. 4 (Winter 2023) by permission of the University of Nebraska Press.
Copyright 2023 by the University of Nebraska Press.
Majda Gama is the award-winning author of In the House of Modern Upbringing for Girls (Wandering Aengus Press, 2025) and The Call of Paradise, (Two Sylvias, 2023). Her honors include the Graybeal-Gowen award for Virginia poets from Shenandoah and the Gregory Djanikian scholar award from Adroit. Majda’s poetry can be found in Ploughshares, POETRY, Prairie Schooner and is forthcoming from TriQuarterly. Majda is currently a co-host of the long-running DC poetry salon Café Muse. She is based in Northern Virginia where she tends to a native plant garden that is certified as a home wildlife sanctuary by the Audubon Society.
Winter '23
Lincoln, Nebraska
University of Nebraska
Editor-in-Chief
Timothy Schaffert
Managing Editor;
Jessica Poli
Prairie Schooner, an international literary magazine, publishes poetry, short fiction, and essays from around the world. In recent years, the quarterly has included authors from six of the seven continents (with subscribers in just as many). Historically, it is one of the nation’s five oldest quarterlies and will celebrate its centennial with the Spring 2027 issue. A project of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln English Department since its debut in 1927, Prairie Schooner is one of UNL’s most important cultural exports and research legacies. Not only has it published some of modern literature’s most notable writers, but it has also provided opportunities for generations of students to gain first-hand editorial experience.
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