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origin of the hero joke

the moon had had it up to her
orbit & back with the man in

her stomach—roiling her ribcage
& kicking her kidneys / she shone


her searchlight for a spot to spit
him / the Target’s neon sign was

too cliché / the boy burning ants
with a magnifying glass, too


cruel / he’d be crushed under semi
tires the second he hit asphalt

at a Chevron / Mount Olympus
was always an option, but no /


she lighted on Elizabeth
Tower, pursed her lips & spat him

into Big Ben’s eye / he landed
with a splat! on the minute hand


& rode a buckle of raindrops
down the turrets to wash up on

a girl’s red rubber boots / she plucked
him up by his shirt collar, poked


his belly with a pinky &
satisfied he was no Ken doll

or GI Joe, let him curl in
the cockle of her ear / she was


in a phase where she’d been planning
to dismantle her dollhouse with

a sledge hammer, but now she had
someone to shelter / she bought polka


dot everything—he connected
them into better bears than clouds

could manage / she gave him dollops
of Cheez Whiz to dine on & rolled


him in her cuffs in poor weather /
when she clipped her nails, he dissolved

into howls for how their crescents
could recall his late lunar home

—
Panika M. C. Dillon is from Fairbanks, AK and Austin, TX. Her work has appeared in Heavy Feather Review, Poets&Artists, Copper Nickel, The Diagram, Steam Ticket, Alice Blue Review, apt, and others. She placed second for the 2024 Vivian Shipley Poetry Prize awarded by the Connecticut Poetry Society. She received her MFA in creative-writing poetry from Sarah Lawrence College and works as a legislative reporter at the Texas Capitol.

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