A TRIPTYCH ELEGY FOR NEIL ARMSTRONG- BY HEATHER CHRISTLE

A TRIPTYCH ELEGY FOR NEIL ARMSTRONG

Created by the brilliant Heather Christle, through erasing most of the audio transcript of the Apollo moon landing, as reproduced in an old English children’s textbook called ‘Things Working’.

I Can’t Swim

I can’t swim because I can’t fit
into the water

                         I am

two million feet tall

but thank you for inviting me

I am standing in line
inside my giant shirt

If someone wanted to weaponize me
they would tell me to lie down on New York

and the city I destroyed
would hurt me back

I eat stars
                        It’s a riot

I know
                        my big mouth
full of  their light

- Heather Christle 

Mistake

For years I have seen
dead animals on the highway

and grieved for them
only to realize they are

not dead animals
they are t shirts

or bits of blown tire
and I have found

myself with this
excess of grief

I have made with
no object to let

it spill over and
I have not known

where to put it or
keep it and then today

 I thought I know
I can give it to you

- Heather Christle 

Perfect Song

I remember walking through the morning 
after a night of heavy snow and drink 
with headphones on and they played 
me the most perfect song: no one 
was awake and I was hungover 
young as clean as a piano 
I thought and at any moment 
someone might fall in love with me I was 
that woven into the electric 
cold bright air and for weeks 
after I went through the album 
in search of the song but could not 
find it and later much later I saw 
that what I had taken to be the song 
was in fact the joyous concordance of 
a moment that would not come again 

- Heather Christle

Pursuits

It is not that you want
to be the one to make prints
in the untrampled snow
It is that you want
to be in the snow
without having touched it
to be of  the snow
not beginning
Everywhere commerce
dictates the shapes
that move you along
that seat you at the table
far from the snow
far from the act
of not touching
It only gets worse
A girl’s gotta eat
And your hunger’s
not even your own

- Heather Christle