Gardner Dorton (he/him) is a poet living in Knoxville, TN with his partner and yellow lab. His poems have appeared before in journals like The Florida Review, Rattle, The Greensboro Review, Narrative, and elsewhere. His chapbook, Stone Fruit, was published in 2021 by Glass Poetry Press, and his debut collection, If I Were God I Would Also Start With Light, is forthcoming September 2024 with Thirty West Publishing House.



Previously in Glass: A Journal of Poetry: Inside the Steeple

August 7, 2024

Gardner Dorton

Love Poem Featuring Ton 618

Super massive, this empty being filled in me. Attraction and obliteration are synonyms this close behind the astral band, this close to the chest under the arms of some god who chose you. Luster is living sap inside the telescope, and I’m so in love with his creation I still hear the clap. I love saying I love you. I love loving the obliterations of my 20’s and breaching the event horizon with some kind of dignity. I love that I found you, here, so far from home.


Last year I entered into a very committed partnership and my muse shifted from sadness to joy. I wanted to find a word big enough for this kind of attraction, and I failed, but I eventually thought of attraction in more literal terms. Ton 618 is a super massive star, dwarfing the Earth’s sun, one of the largest known entities in the universe. I thought of something this large, how its presence is so breathtaking that there’s no choice but to be literally drawn in. So I gave in, I let myself be drawn. Ton 618 was a vehicle to express that shift.


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