by Robbie Gamble
News item: scientists are jubilant
as a golf cart-sized hunk of space
payload pulled up and T-boned
a minor asteroid a touch more
massive than Fenway Park—
a veritable bullseye—our first
home entry into the extraterrestrial
demolition derby. Newsfeeds showed
grainy shots of an apparent pumice
stone looming in the void, then
a blank screen, followed by polo-
shirted Mission Control engineers
high-fiving and avowing “This one’s
for the dinosaurs!” as if they
might have changed the course
of paleontology had NASA been
operational back at the end
of the Cretaceous Era. Today
we are watching as Hurricane
Ian, a Cat 4 beast, is slamming
into the Florida Gulf Coast, and I
bet there’s a whole bunch of golf
carts being swept inland with
the storm surge, while the governor
hunkers behind hasty barricades
of banned books, and the Red Sox
might have to relocate for next
spring training. A certain president
floated the notion of nuking hurricanes
back out into open water. Hmm. And
there was also that business of beating
a virus back with bleach. In space,
no one can hear you tee off.
Robbie Gamble (he/him) is the author of A Can of Pinto Beans (Lily Poetry Review Press, 2022). His poems have appeared in the Atlanta Review, Lunch Ticket, RHINO, Salamander, and The Sun. He divides his time between Boston and Vermont.
