Assessment Bodies
My latest research project is just a vehicle
for the handsome space travelers
to finally kiss. Foreplay all about edging
the event horizon. Gravity gags &
stellar displays of force. Space dust in his eyes,
the blinded beaustronaut cries crystalline tears
while his captain tongues him on autopilot.
Studios love it, but my research unit can’t count
deliverable impact outcome measurements.
I’m up for review in my space suit.
Discovery comes at a cost, I’ll tell them.
To have that kiss you have to swallow
the radiation too. Just like on earth, changing
possibility is violent, leaves your lips with a sting.
I’m not responsible for every kid who doesn’t pogo
across the moon. I take them places
anyway. They want my next project
to be a non-linear walk in the park.
Jump cuts through feeding time at the zoo.
Jeremy Allan Hawkins is the author of A Clean Edge, selected by Richard Siken as winner of the 2016 BOAAT Chapbook Contest. Born in New York City and raised in the Hudson Valley, he has been the recipient of a grant from the US Fulbright Program and a teaching fellowship from the Alabama Prison Arts + Education Project. His poetry has appeared in Best New Poets 2016, the extended program of the 2018 Venice Biennale di Architettura, and the inaugural 2018 edition of the Rencontre Mondiale de la Poésie, as well as literary journals in the United States and Europe. He lives in France.