"Rocket" by Allison Hummel

VOICEMAIL POEMS

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. --------------------------------------- SUPPORT US ON PATREON: http://patreon.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/guidelines http://facebook.com/voicemailpoems http://twitter.com/voicemailpoems http://voicemailpoems.org/thepodcast