B.A. Van Sise
Peterson Space Force Base
We will be able, soon, to
make war among the stars.
Go to Mars, find people there,
and kill them. For now,
we can get to Denver,
mostly by the interstate, where
trucks full of kids being trained
to take over endless nothing
shuffle between sedans, campers,
a trucker on his fifth cup of
coffee today, all of them watching,
carefully, the road, and never
looking up at the sky.
Training Center Cape May
You need to push against the Earth;
A wider berth is not available
but you’re still able to manage a few
in the small space between the bed
and the basin where you brush your teeth,
beneath which there is a comb that
the last person to sleep on your pillow
has left behind. Behind that,
there are a few blonde hairs and a tissue.
To feel it, you need to go almost to the floor,
a little more than most people do. An inch is enough
to show you’ve still got the stuff to pass
muster like the younger guys. You don’t.
You grunt and heave and try to believe
that once this was easy, that
there was a time when, if you
pushed against the world,
the world did not push back.
B.A. Van Sise is an author and photographic artist focused on the intersection between language and the visual image. He is the author of two monographs: Children of Grass: A Portrait of American Poetry and Invited to Life: Finding Hope After the Holocaust. He has previously been featured in solo exhibitions at the Skirball Center, the Center for Creative Photography, the Center for Jewish History and the Museum of Jewish Heritage, and in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. He is a New York State Council on the Arts Fellow, winner of a Leonian grant, a PX3 award-winner, a finalist for the Rattle Poetry Prize, and an IPPY gold medalist.