What I Want To Be When I Grow Up
o
Star sailor, history’s tailor, spacefarer,
oooooohow far you’ve needled your path through space,
past blue halo, our circle of vapor,
oooooopast the vast figure-eight of plasma swathes,
how near to infinity and back.
ooooooThat happy past has gone by, is bygone,
and then it came slapping back again,
oooooobooming on boosters, rolling upside down,
catching its breath as if overcoming
oooooodynamic forces requires only great
inspiration. Will posterity shear
oooooogravity along the seam, trail a wake,
wake us? The astronaut’s trajectory
oooooohas stitched the warp and weft of history.
Anna Leahy's book Constituents of Matter won the Wick Poetry Prize, and her chapbook Sharp Miracles is out from Blue Lyra Press. Her nonfiction book Tumor is forthcoming from Bloomsbury in 2017. She teaches in the MFA and BFA programs at Chapman University, where she edits the international journal TAB and curates the Tabula Poetica reading series. She also co-writes Lofty Ambitions blog at loftyambitions.wordpress.com.