Wormhole

          after the movie Interstellar (2014)

ruin their stalks.
men of little maize die amazingly often in a windvane
with haywires firm to their throat—
cyst we rip off, & fling to space,
or bedrooms,
where fathers become their children’s ghost,
promising comebacks & bliss
& time between them as Einstein’s ring.
he’ll grope the wormhole to touch an age;
a different timezone robotic in pace
& moon rifles.
faces he had known, whittling to shape
like dew points.
they do nothing to the corn bulbs dying how they breathe.
survivors, more relic than their looks,
than centuries they lose to a trace of data signaled home,
as a flood, or pool, or watering tool
for their hood having dust bowls for food.
on earth, a teen twiced her father’s age
& lived with that decision.
& the world did not end, because nothing ends far from home.
& I’m that man, detached,
approached like a horizon,
relearning Newton’s third law & emotion.
all my god sides, preached down,
to go through this.
I have my visual of events all jammed, like killer drones,
& I crash into a new earth,
becoming my daughter’s ghost when I seance her to break rules,
& read gravity:
dot-dot, then dash.
& I’m centuried like noon, like a millennium for two:
her fate & mine knowing me back to her sickbed,
made grey to abuse my looks.


—Nnadi Samuel