while celebrating two thousand eleven years
of service, mother earth is getting tired of people jumping
and shaking her tectonic plates. it makes me
wonder, though: when people shoot guns up in the air to celebrate
another three hundred sixty-five days in front
of them, ejecting tiny sheets of metal into the dark
smoky sky;

where do the bullets fall? i’m sure
they pierce through clouds and rain and moonlight.
but where do they fall asleep?
fireworks are a different subject, for they
are recyclable in people
as fleeting moments from the ground to the sky. maybe
the bullets, in their afterlife, are inside of people too
like you, when all the pretty boys come to you
and you say “no, jimmy, we won’t watch
the fireworks tonight.”