He said he prepared the space shuttle.
Because of him, men walked on the moon.

If we were young, we could have worn parachutes
or held on to pillows, floating
through air, or I’d fly an airplane
straight to the Amazon, spanning
across countries. I was leaving
Regal Heights Nursing Home, waving
goodbye to my mother,
when Gerald in his loud yellow vest,
his green pants and socks,
tried to follow me in his wheelchair,
spinning his wheels with his hands;

the elevator alarms sounding
in the entrance hall
the aides rushed in, pulling him into his room,
his Hoyer like a life jacket, lifting him up.Cathy McArthur’s (aka Palermo’s) work has appeared in Blueline, Barrow Street, Hanging Loose, Gargoyle, The Bellevue Literary Review, The Valparaiso Poetry Review, Lumina, Jacket, Cross-connect, Women’s Studies Quarterly, and other journals. Her translations of Blanca Castellon, from Nicaragua, are forthcoming in Ping Pong Magazine. Cathy teaches creative writing and composition in The City College of New York, where she received her MFA in Poetry, and the Malanche Award for her literary translations.