There was no space odyssey.
\nInstead, more than towers fell
\nin the city where I live.
\nPeople were still counting
\npaper scraps in Florida
\nfor the sake of a flawed process.
\nPeople were still dying
\nin Gujarat\u2019s earthquaked cracks
\nin Ghana\u2019s stampeded stadiums
\nand in the summer of the media
\ncalling shark attacks on Santa Rosa
\na national security threat.
\nThe Taliban\u2019s advent, McVeigh\u2019s execution
\nfor destroying what seemed an entire city.
\nI had just turned seven.
\nFor my birthday, my mother
\nbought me a Beatles CD.
\nLater that year, George Harrison died\u2014
\nmy favorite one, the one
\nwho sang about how all things must
\ncome to an end. But
\nhow were endings possible
\nin a new millennium? New
\nWikipedia, where we learned
\nhow to summarize. New Nokia,
\nnew Madonna, even language felt
\nrefreshed: A.I., iTunes, OS X, Xbox.
\nIt was the first time I broke my arm
\nin two separate places. I visited the zoo
\nand watched the animals roar at each other,
\nand at themselves. My mother dispelled
\nSanta Claus, perhaps a year too soon
\nfor my imagination to take. I cried
\nuntil I received extra presents
\nfor keeping the secret from my sister.
\nI saw myself in the Backstreet Boys,
\nin the highest rated Super Bowl in history,
\nas Harry Potter, whether philosopher
\nor sorcerer. Everything still felt possible
\nto a seven-year-old, who had just
\nheard about the first tourist in space
\nand thought it was an odyssey.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I comb my hair with a small hairbrush.
\nI no longer walk in nature. And when
\nI sit on the front porch, sipping
\nwhatever\u2019s left from the mason jar
\nfilled with all that last night, I flick
\nthe maggots from my skin.
\nThe parked car outside the house
\nsits with its tarped over cover since before
\nI remember. I remember
\nplaying dolls with my sister
\nwhile my father wedged a football
\ninto my hands, and said
\nyou must throw as far as you can.
\nOpen wide, my arms onto the wheel
\nwhere I learned how a man
\ndrives five miles above the limit.
\nIt was cold that first Kentucky,
\nwhere I first kissed masculine lips,
\nwet as leather, chapped the way
\nwe hid from what we learned
\nin locker rooms. We grazed the sides
\nof our heads against the Cypress bark.
\nWhile we leaned against its trunk, I saw
\npigs in the distance, wrestling
\nin the nightmud. They cannot know
\nhow soon they will be separated, then skinned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There was no space odyssey. \/ Instead, more than towers fell . . .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":4092,"template":"","categories":[9,49,119],"tags":[1171,6,1172,1173,1174],"class_list":["post-4090","article","type-article","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aquifer","category-literary-features","category-poetry","tag-1171","tag-aquifer-the-florida-review-online","tag-barbie","tag-brian-chandler-wiora","tag-brian-wiora"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n