When I was a four-year-old in Lincoln
I catapulted over my tricycle handle bars and
My right knee kissed sidewalk and came away
with a galaxy of spider-web blood
I was overcome; I limped back
Worse, when I arrived on the stoop
My mother had not yet come home
I had to wait, tears streaming everywhere
Blood on my knee and on my so-tiny cuticles
Waiting one hundred thousand centuries for her
This minor event occurred to me – I recalled it –
in the depths of the Earth where one can touch
the concrete rebar which reinforced the yards
of poured concrete wrapping around the launch
control pill which served as a vest for the men
inside of it waiting to turn two keys and deliver
10 atomic pizzas – ‘world-wide delivery in 30 minutes
or less or your next one’s free’ it says painted on
the 8-ton blast door and on the fridge magnet
reproductions they sell in the Minuteman II gift
shop store with ‘Bert the Turtle’ t-shirts for the kiddies
The concrete skin allowed the men to work undisturbed
by mushrooming distractions upstairs even if they felt
the birthday balloons popping across the prairie above
The rebar reinforcements are thicker than
a tiny Tommy’s leg at the knee; that’s some thick rebar
Thomas Simmons is a professor at the Knudson School of Law where he teaches future lawyers about future interests and serves as the faculty advisor to the Saint Thomas More Society. He is a lifelong South Dakotan and the author of Tod Browning Loose Leaf Encyclopedia (Cyberwit 2020), S is for Sentence (Cyberwit 2021), and Soviets on Venus (Finishing Line Press (forthcoming)). He enjoys beets, marimba music, puddles, and Japanese pottery. He has never had a cavity. He used to teach fourth graders.
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