Crowded Heavens Over New Jersey by Dan Rosenberg - Rattle: Poetry (original) (raw)

Even when we drag the trash cans

to the curb, we look up. A nightlife

in the sky. We heard it’s al-Qaeda,

we heard it’s the government.

Or China, or a pack of creeps all acting

alone. We have concerns. We have these

ammunition bases beside our homes.

We look up even when we walk

our dogs. They come in from the ocean,

they follow some logic, they are, we are

sure, many instances of a single thing.

Airplanes don’t hover, stars don’t

flash in reds and whites and greens.

We haven’t seen exactly that ourselves,

but the videos! But who can trust

the videos anymore? We heard it’s

AI, we heard it’s hobbyists looking

for themselves. Even when we have

our neighbors over, we look up. Lights

are lurking in the sky. Surely cameras.

Surely a swarm of mechanical eyes.

We hold up our kids, think maybe

we will be famous. What’s strange

must have a single explanation. We heard

it’s aliens, Iran, its mothership floating

over the horizon. We are dizzy, our necks

ache. We demand answers we won’t believe.

On our crowded beaches, we will not get

used to these crowded heavens. We are used to

nothing being up there when we look.