In Freefall

Hungover, I taught literature 

in lunar tundra, wearing moon boots.

I moved sluggish as an astronaut,

addressed the nosecone-white dry erase board

as if encumbered by a spacesuit,

as if alone on the surface of the moon.

Clutched in swollen hands, my instrument poised, 

I scrawled alien words like “verisimilitude”,

I encircled codenames: Poe, Hawthorne, Melville  

in bubbles, connected them with air hoses 

in desperate bids to rewire the ignition 

system and get my lecture back into orbit.

But sometimes in the midst of class I simply

shut my eyes and the world fell away. Hovered

before the students, free of language and gravity

for long, vacuous moments as my brain

gasped inside its throbbing socket and black holes

gaped and roared and sucked at the backs of my capsule eyes.

Air searing bright around me, I would reenter 

the classroom’s atmosphere, find myself bobbing

in a calm sea of bemused and concerned faces,

my SOS signal quietly bleeping its lonely message.