by Allison Hummel
Part 1: Untitled
It was yesterday or something, when I heard
the song playing in a store, asking
do I make myself a blessing to everyone I meet?
I don’t sing it to myself, exactly, but I do repeat it,
metallic gyre, all the day long.
In the at-home lab of an electrical engineer,
I was surrounded by metallic gyres (not an industry term,)
tiny spools of wire thread that do not unwind
to fulfill their purpose.
I touched things carefully, understanding
none of them, vaguely
susceptible like a green bruise because
we had woken up in one another’s
legs. Do I make myself a blessing?
(I really do. I am
not perfect, but lovely,
and a perceived dearth of this,
of lovely people, is just a
cultivated skew, benefiting whom?
It’s like, capitalism.)
Anyway, unearthed Soviet
tubes filled with brief
forests of material mythos
surrounded me, hofbrau,
complex blessing. Engineer says:
…(the) reactors all disappeared
and who knows where they are. Each could kill
100,000 people.
He makes coffee, I sit on the lawn.
Oh, and at 1:47 we watched a rocket
ascend. It did not go straight up,
in case you are wondering.
Part 2: Rocket Ascent at Vandenberg
It appeared to experience
a horizontal epoch, a teendom.
Maybe meandering is part of all
great inclinations. I’m reminded of
“…the falcon cannot hear the falconer,”
but that’s never really true, it’s only a game.
The rocket could definitely hear the falconer,
and I feel sure that it still does,
even at this very moment.