“On Choosing to Deny the Moon Landing” (Poem)

Convince me they filmed it on a soundstage.
Convince me solar wind made the trip impossible
and all the astronauts had to stay home. Maybe
it was just a Communist fund-raiser after all.
I watch the grainy filmstrip. I hear the banter
between Houston and the moon, and I see
the astronauts kicking up dust in the Sea of Tranquility
as they try to explain how the body adjusts
to lunar gravity. Over 400,000 people
worked on this mission. Today I read
that scientists used lunar probes to investigate
the Man in the Moon. They said he was formed
by an ancient magma plume and not an asteroid.
Every day something else is proven, discovered,
and another thing gets erased. In the forensic age,
hope is only possible when we discard
the so-called real. I want to think there are places
we have left to go, planetary bodies
without machine-stitched flags
sinking into their skins.
To lie on my back and look
at stars that don’t have any names.