balloons, rocks & cigarettes
by t. zoEy benally

eleven hours a day just isn't enough
his slow march from east to west
sparkling arch through nitrogen, oxygen
gaseous fields on earth's margins
it just isn't enough

but how do you change the sun?
perhaps an organism more diabolical?
perhaps a creature more integral to the ecosystem?
perhaps if i were actually a planet?
shoot! i just need my own magnetic field

i hear there are places, though
where the sun shines, rubs fingers
of heat over earth and her children
24 hours a day
Alaska is what i heard whispered
from pine to juniper to greasewood
to sagebrush to me

so i let it all go
rubbed static sticky on balloons released
to make their way back to where their contents
are no longer lighter
wrapped it in cigarettes and gave them out
to transients under I17 and Peoria
lit and smoked, dissipate into ambient air
placed it on rocks and skipped them across the Rio Grande

i let it all go
to be the fittest, to survive
spores and seedlings released to fly wild
surf a jet stream around the world
hurled up through troposphere to stratosphere
i blow kisses to nimbostratus