Gross Fable 2

Kyle Hemmings

Today, the astronauts have returned
with their lunar soliloquies.
Two of them are your ex-lovers,
the other, a closet android waiting
to discover same sex with parallel partners.
You invite the two Xs to your house
and pull gravity from under their feet.
One panics. You’re reminded of your
childhood parakeet let loose in the house.
Poor neurotic thing dropped from exhaustion.
You went mad for weeks. Then you put on
aviator goggles and withdrew from the world.
The other promises he’ll do anything if you
give him back the ability to fall logarithmically,
the vertical tendency towards dense.
His lies remind you of the ease of gaseous exchange
in a world of liquid need and solid resource.
But since you’re wearing your space shoes,
lead with custom soles, you have no need
for men forever stuck on their uppity selves.


Kyle Hemmings is the author of several chapbooks of poems: Avenue C and Cat People (Scars Publications), Fuzzy Logic (Punkin Press), and Amsterdam & Other Broken Love Songs (Flutter Press). He has been published at Gold Wake Press, Thunderclap Press, Blue Fifth Review, Step Away, and The Other Room. He blogs at http://upatberggasse19.blogspot.com/.