For Three Dead Astronauts

Peter Fiore

Perhaps because we don’t count the dead and don’t believe in death but tonight the television people couldn’t even pronounce your names correctly and kept stumbling over their prepared lines and outside it kept on snowing and when I got drunk enough I jumped off the roof into a snowbank. The announcer spent about five minutes telling us how one of you was born in Michigan and another had once lived here, and President Johnson mentioned something about our hearts going out to you, like Richard II.

Because the moon’s already been bombed and even lovers don’t believe in it anymore. Only life can go boom but now there’s no more cold beers after work and no more screwing, no more hot throb in your throats when you wake up and maybe if I could think of the moon as something other than another Super Bowl I wouldn’t have to corner the maid in the cellar.

This brave new celebration for fatherless children’s fathers. Buck Rogers.