In 1986
Bridget Kriner
Challenger only took 73 seconds to disintegrate in flight
& Chernobyl burned for 10 days, but still I’ll never forget how grief-
struck I felt at the part when Goose died. My dad took us to see it
& Chernobyl burned for 10 days, but still I’ll never forget how grief-
struck I felt at the part when Goose died. My dad took us to see it
at the Center Mayfield Cinema so many times, I told my 3rd grade
teacher I wanted to join the Navy & be a fighter pilot. I was still choked
up when Maverick had to let him go in the dyed green water
among waves of plaintive piano crescendo, though watching at home
on vhs, my parents skipped past the blue gauzy sex scene we already saw
at least six times that summer. And in September, some people
thought they’d release millions of balloons in our Cleveland sky,
believed the entire asteroid field of latex would eventually
elevate & disappear or follow Halley’s path, but the helium
maelstrom collided with a front of cool air & rain–
balloons plummeted as drivers swerved through a slow blizzard,
gawking before the shoreway was shut & a bulldozer cleared
the fallen orbs. They all had high hopes & bad science: faulty O-rings
& hubris, a flawed reactor design & ineptitude, a glitch in F-14’s canopy–
it sticks in a flat spin, & even if you fast forward, you can never unsee.
Bridget Kriner (she/her) is a community college professor in Cleveland Ohio. Her work has appeared in Rattle (Poets Respond), Book of Matches, Shelia-Na-Gig, Whiskey Island and Split this Rock, where she won First Place in the Abortion Rights Poetry Contest in 2012. She has two children, a dog, and a cat. She published a chapbook, Autoethnography, with Guide to Kulchur-Green Panda Press, a local project in Cleveland in 2014.
© Variant Literature Inc 2023