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| Into orbit around Jupiter. Lockheed Martin built the Juno spacecraft for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Photo credit: NASA/Lockheed Martin via UniverseToday. |
The god Jupiter drew a veil of clouds around himself to hide his mischief, and his wife, the goddess Juno, was able to peer through the clouds and reveal Jupiter's true nature. —NASA explaining how the space probe Juno was named.
Jupiter covers his infidelity
with thick clouds, masquerading
behind an entire atmosphere
as something we’d want to discover.
He surely looks at Earth and laughs
at the colorless vapor that veils
the outlines of land and sea, at how
we are tilted in constant bow to the sun.
We cannot cover our sins like a god.
The façade of our planet is cracked
like the skin that surrounds a laceration,
framing a picture for the Universe
of our uniformed men sweeping our black
bodies away in a flood of blood-spatter
while we choose to read lists of their crimes
as eulogies. They must die a thousand times
on our televisions and a thousand more behind
the eyelids of loved ones. We turn blue fabric
purple, soaking it in the holes our bullets dig
into the men who resemble killers. We are unable
to grant that lungs still rise and fall below
badges, that no offense can hide a dead body
as it rots without reverence in the street,
that no cloud can clot bullet wounds.
Soon, Juno will peer through Jupiter's curtain
and crash to her death on his surface,
and we will finally be forced to recognize
that a guilty man never becomes the victim.
Allie Long is an economics and English double-major at the University of Virginia. Her poetry appears in Ground Fresh Thursday, Yellow Chair Review, and Bird's Thumb.