Today’s Poem

Grandfather Watching Planet of the Apes

Space makes a man lonely, Charlton Heston
told me this, hours past midnight. Then I remembered
my grandfather loved this man. He could
watch Heston crash-land into lakes all day,
pausing and shaking his fist at the nomads who stole
his clothes. That year he bought me a membership
to the junior RNA. I liked to shoot birds and cans.
I learned animals were machines for making meat.
My grandfather loved America, penicillin,
the man on the moon, and the production of heat
only visible as steam inside a crane’s soiled, cold cab.
He knew man makes a desert by in putting green paradise
and too much time. He taught me to make paper airplanes,
mentioning Bernoulli’s principle of lift. His blood
pressure rose. He watched and whished to be Heston,
running off with a girl who couldn’t speak, a gun
and a fresh horse with nowhere to go.

-Jason Braun