Goodbye, Gagarin
by Eric Weinstein

i know you were afraid
you'd go down like the kursk
on reentry,

never again to graze the earth
walking through red square
or along the old road back to klushino.

drifting past the night
side of the world, you were
first to see the planet from the sky alive:

and though i heard you found
no god there, i wonder whether
the dead were with you on that flight,

whether you are back there with them now,
perhaps framing the earth in your hands,
imagining a snowball, an empty field, in gzhatsk.

Eric Weinstein recently graduated magna cum laude from Duke University with an AB in English and Philosophy. He was born in Macon, Georgia and grew up in Nashua, New Hampshire. He currently lives and writes in Hoboken, New Jersey. His poetry has previously appeared in The Archive, Wheelhouse Magazine, Prick of the Spindle, Rainy Day, and others, and has won several awards, including the Anne Flexner Prize in Poetry.

© 2008 prickofthespindle.com