I still believe I can build a space shuttle With tinfoil helmets we wore as children And garbage I glean from street corners. Please let me craft our mother ship In your backyard—my home sickness Is the size of Pluto. Cold war kids like us can’t wait for wealth, Trickling down from superpowers. We have to launch our own salvation. Our Space Race is between landlords And every one of our ancestors who never Could defy the gravity of this town. We were bound to these tenement space stations The day our parents signed our birth certificates. Slumlords will redline us outside The city limits of their solar systems If we linger in this neighborhood. They will terminate our mission to exist With eviction notices, claiming our rent payments Aren’t big enough to live on this planet. We will be homeless like Pluto, Exiled because we are too small to brawl The bullies of the universe out of our path. Houston, we’ve had a problem since we were born And mission control’s phone lines are dead. If NASA could slingshot Apollo 13 Around the moon, two broke kids Can escape the orbit of the ghetto. We will blastoff from this neighborhood, Abandon this paycheck-to-paycheck city, Discover a new galaxy to call home. Our small step away from the man Is a giant leap toward a homeland. ✱✱✱
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