And then there were model rockets that climbed rickety ladders
of propellant and smoke into the suburban night.
Mine never launched right. Always shooting sideways or exploding,
leaving the grass scorched, leaving the sky unexplored. Leaving
my life once I drove away from friends crying in a diner,
and then it was four hundred and forty-three miles of corn
and abortion billboards and grain silos. When our world ends
insects will hollow those silos, then hollow the cities,
then hollow of human concepts the world will be simpler
like childhood, or what television advertisements tell us
childhood should be, and rarely is. The ISS is destined
to crash into the Pacific in nine years’ time. It seems
undignified though really what else could be done, a burning
jungle gym hurtling to earth. No one goes home unscathed.