New York
by Esther Sun
I have to believe my father
and I are not the same. In my lecture,
the grizzled professor speaks
of black body radiation and the Doppler Shift,
voice soft as a cobweb fleeing from the sun.
I wonder what life on the moon
might look like, waving goodbye
to every passing spaceship after the time
for gawking has elapsed. Now, buying flights
to Mexico to visit the boy who finally learned
to say Shenzhen right, I pray that there I’ll find
something sacred, that in some universe
it might be considered holy
to stake everything you have on desire.