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Time & Rockets & Opposites

Go home, Yank. We do not like your kind here,
said the hotel clerk in Central London.
To be fair, I requested a new room,
one that didn’t smell like the NYC Subway.
During the Blitz, where the bombs fell
was as random as life gets. Or ends.
Hotel brick dust on too many bowlers.
Apple in front of a face in a painting
only 5 years later. The thing is, with
the V-2’s, you often heard them after
they landed & if they landed on you,
well then you never heard them,
time’s inversion surprising you with its
complete ability to surprise after the fact.

Inspired by Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon (1973) & The Son of Man by René Magritte (1946).

Ignorance of the Present

Harry Truman never wanted to be
President, but rose from the muddy
water, the town of big canoes, insisted
on pronouncing his home state with
an end A instead of its on-paper I—
Missouri Missoura Missouri Missoura—
& went on to serve two terms,
drop a bomb or two & said that,
really mindbogglingly, wasn’t even
the toughest decision of his presidency,
see Korean War or Israel’s creation,
& none of us can undo what’s already
been done. You can’t stop it, despite
all these desperate attempts. You’re
coming of age unlike David Copperfield,
whether you like it or not, & you can’t
go back, can’t backspace, can’t turn
this sandstone back into sand, these
berries back into a bush. There’s been
a dead doe at the side of the road
all summer now, & she’s started
to look like a deflated balloon
version of herself rather than
herself. Her insides inspiring life
in too many insects to count, because
as soon as you start pinning all
of them to the black felt of your
display case, they can’t help but
inspire more.

Sofia the Flying Telescope

You don’t need a spyglass to see back
into your own history, into what might’ve
been, never was, or where exactly you
made the correct choice—thin line between
reflection & regret—insight, foresight,
& potential. How a glass & a mirror
can shift from one to the other & back
with even the slightest of head tilts
isn’t all that different from the thin line
between envy & empathy. You know
the last photograph Dad ever took
of his mom came after his father cracked
him across the jaw, ordered him up
to the funeral home to get a pre-wake
Polaroid of his dressed-in-white-but-gone-
before-fifty Mom. The makeup didn’t
do a great job of masking the liver
cancer’s yellow skin side effect. How
often our masks are more transparent
than we first assessed. Something less
personal here means the still surface
of a puddle-filled pothole. Beauty in
decay. Life in decay as necessary for
life’s continuance, the forest floor’s
humus, & humans rarely get to see
the atmosphere’s thin line & even if
we did, we need boundaries on our
empathy, slowly built immunity to
the breaking news reports, because
we’ll never accomplish anything if
we’re constantly reminded of how
quickly it can all go away. Microscope
into kaleidoscope. That photograph
that Dad snapped? It was the sole
photo of Grandma Jeanne that
Grandpa Fred kept on his bureau
the rest of his life. Not their wedding
photo. Not a family portrait. Not 9
kids in Sunday’s best on the Nicholson
& Lake front porch. It sat there, that
overexposed death mask, propped
against his cherry watch box next to
the dusty but cherished July 25, 1969,
Time Magazine featuring Neil Armstrong,
the final grand world event Grandma
Jeanne would ever witness. Thin line
between observable & infrared light
25 million light years from Earth’s
curve, as if glimpsed from the high
speed high flying open door of a 747
because if we can see back far enough,
we might understand what comes next.

Inspired by The Last Stargazers: The Enduring Story of Astronomy’s Vanishing Explorers by Emily Levesque (2020) & The Pregnant Widow by Martin Amis (2010).

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Bob King is an Associate Professor of English at Kent State University at Stark. His poetry collection And & And is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. Newer work appears in or is forthcoming from Olney Magazine, Bullshit Lit, Lean & Loafe Poetry Journal, Metachrosis Literary, Paddler Press, Crab Apple Literary, Words & Sports Quarterly, LEON Literary Review, The Blue Flame Review, The Parliament Literary Journal, Fahmidan Journal, Erato Magazine, coalitionworks, Moss Puppy Magazine, The Daily Drunk, Curio Cabinet Magazine, Spare Parts Literary Magazine, JAKE, The Viridian Door, Ink Sweat & Tears, Full House Literary, Moot Point Magazine, Drunk Monkeys, andAôthen Magazine. He lives in Fairview Park, Ohio, with his wife & daughters. Twitter: @KingRobertJ Website: bobking.org