LOOK UP AND LOOK OUT!

by Ron Shapiro

NASA estimates there are more than 100 million pieces of space junk larger than 1 millimeter in diameter in LEO. Approximately 500,000 of those objects are between 1 and 10 centimeters, and more than 25,000 of them are greater than 10 centimeters wide. —Freethink, November 29, 2025

 

On the darkest night of the year

when stars glow like brilliant diamonds

reminding us that we are indeed star dust

that has taken human form on this planet,

we should be grateful for the moonlight

under which tides flow, nocturnal animals

emerge from safe shelters and lovers kiss.

 

Look up once more then slowly realize that

what you thought were stars are actually 

more than 100 million pieces of rockets

and satellites, tools discarded on spacewalks,

junk floating in space. 

 

Here, on this planet, huge landfills stacked high

like mountains with 

    computers, 

    electronics,

    batteries, 

    styrofoam, 

    ink cartridges, 

    glass bottles,

    diapers,

    enough paper to fill several decimated forests

    and, of course, the toxic poisons released

    from human garbage.

 

The Earth is not large enough to handle this waste. 

 

In a world that can seem like a warehouse of commodities,

where capitalism begs for your dollars, once again 

human exceptionalism does not seem to care. 

 

Trash the planet or trash space, 

it’s all the same to those in power. 

 

And once all that space junk begins to collide,

sending more satellites into orbit will become

too risky. Without such devices to enhance 

communication, predict weather patterns,

bring about scientific breakthroughs.

 

Even the possibility of intergalactic travel,

the dreams of science fiction writers and

futurists, writers and artists, will fall into

darkness while humans, who once looked

up to the stars for hope and creative

inspiration, protect themselves from

any space junk falling from the sky.

Ron Shapiro, an award-winning teacher, has published over 20 poems in publications including Nova Bards 24 & 25, Virginia Writers Project, The New Verse News, Poetry X Hunger, Minute Musings, Backchannels, Gezer Kibbutz Gallery, All Your Poems, Paper Cranes Literary Magazine, Zest of the Lemon and twochapbooks: Sacred Spaces, Wonderings and Understory, a collection of nature poetry.

DEATH CLEANING

by Melissa Balmain

“Swedish death cleaning [is the] tradition of decluttering and organizing one's life before passing away.” —The Spruce
 

My junk had piled up for years
wherever I could shove it.
Decluttering? Just not my thing—
and yet, this week, I love it.
 
So long, old pamphlets, pens, receipts,
and shirt with half a collar!
Hello, bare floors and empty drawers!
I’ve triumphed over squalor!
 
I used to think I’d never need
to death-clean like the Swedish;
no midlife ill had goosed my will
to keep my closets neatish.
 
Whose symptoms of mortality,
whose fast-approaching coffin
and crumbling bone, if not my own,
could make me tidy often?
 
Now as our nation’s vitals teem
with metastatic cancer
for which a cure is far from sure,
I’ve finally got my answer.

Melissa Balmain edits Light, America's longest-running journal of comic verse. Her latest book of poetry is Satan Talks to His Therapist (Paul Dry Books).

THE GREAT PACIFIC GARBAGE PATCH

a mirror poem

by Elise Kazanjian

What were we all thinking?

An abandoned fishing boat  toothbrushes

six tons of gill nets   toys   lawn chairs   plastic

containers   a three and a half ton  mysterious object twenty

feet wide six feet high   shoes    millions miniscule plastic waste bits    trawling

booms   plastic rods  tires   huge foam buoys  stewing in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch three 

times the size of France  growing every day    in 2009 the non-profit Ocean Voyages

Institute’s 132-foot sailing cargo ship begins removing plastics from the ocean    

many of us move mouths    jaw about oceans     threatened oceans that give

life to all creatures    oceans once polluted can not be salvaged   

What were we all thinking?

 

What are we all thinking?

The oceans once polluted can not be salvaged      so many creatures

humans    given life    many of   us move mouths        jaw about oceans     threatened    

in 2009 the  non-profit Ocean Voyages Institute’s132-foot sailing cargo ship

begins removing plastic from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch three times

the size of France   growing every day   millions miniscule plastic waste bits     trawling

booms   plastic rods    tires   marine debris  stewing with lawn chairs    

plastic containers   a three and a half ton mysterious object twenty

feet wide six feet high    shoes   toothbrushes    six tons

of gill nets    toys   an abandoned fishing boat  

What were we all thinking?

Elise Kazanjian’s poems have appeared in Fog & Light: San Francisco Seen Through the Eyes of the Poets Who Live Here 2021; the Marin Poetry Center Anthology 2022, and others. She was Foreign Editor, CCTV, Beijing; has been a San Francisco pawnbroker; and is Co-Judge, Prose Poem, Soul-Making Keats Literary Competition.

RESPONSIBLE SPACE BEHAVIORS

by Marsha Segerberg

You can keep an eye on the re-entry of the Long March 4B at Aerospace.

“Heads Up! A Used Chinese Rocket Is Tumbling Back to Earth This Weekend. The chances of it hitting a populated area are small, but not zero. That has raised questions about how the country’s space program designs its missions.” —The New York Times, May 7, 2021

The Long March 5B is tumbling out of control. 

A 10-story, 23-ton array of hurtling

rocket junk. Uncontrolled re-entry.

Yes.

 

It’s a bus that went to a space station called Tiangong,

Chinese for Heavenly Palace.

 

Chances you could be hit are not zero, they say in the news.

Some time Saturday. Maybe Sunday.

Chicago is safe. New York City—maybe not.

 

I think it’s irresponsible, said someone from NASA.

Some people are not displaying responsible space behaviors.

said the press secretary.

 

A NASA satellite about the size of a school bus,

whammed back to earth in 2011, but only a 1-in-3,200 chance

anyone would be hurt. That’s what they calculated.

 

The Long March 5B could spread 10 tons over hundreds of miles.

Think about three pickup trucks’ worth of debris,

NASA said. Not so bad, spread out like that, right?

 

There was the Columbia, disintegrating over Texas. 

No one was hurt on the ground by the 85,000 pounds of junk. 

I wonder if that included the seven astronauts..

I wonder what their collective ashes weighed. 

 

There was the Challenger blowing apart after launch. 

Another seven astronauts. Several crew members

 are known to have survived the initial breakup

 of the spacecraft... no escape system... the impact

of the crew compartment at terminal velocity

with the ocean surface was too violent to be survivable.

You can visit the metal pieces in a museum.

 

There was Apollo 1 that didn’t even get off the ground,

so not to worry about falling mangled debris. Just

three astronauts burned up on the launch pad. 

We don’t count them as space junk. 

It was only a test.

 

They say they’re doing their best to stick ocean landings,

(except for the Long March 5B, for which there is no plan).

I wonder what the fish think.

 

Marsha Segerberg is a retired biology educator and member of COW (Community of Writers) in Phoenix, Arizona. Her poems have appeared in Chiron, Rat’s Ass Review, and Rogue Agent, among others. She lives in the Phoenix desert with her dog, Peggy.