Sky Ladder, by Pasuale Petit

After Cai Guo-Qiang

Quick, before the sun

rises, get up one more

time, my grandmother.

The artist won’t mind

if you borrow

his sky ladder.

Place your foot

on the bottom rung

and keep climbing,

even though

you’re a skeleton

with a broken neck

from falling downstairs

on Guy Fawkes night.

The ladder is wrapped

in gunpowder, and he’s

lit the touchpaper.

Your bones are ascending

firecrackers.

You’re half a kilometer

high now, halfway

to the universe,

my joy-gardener.

I hope you find a

garden with rich black

soil for your black

roses, hybrids like you—

half white half Indian,

half woman half flower,

their roots twined

through your skull,

you who were transplanted

among the pale roses

of a British family.

Your skin now a mix

of photons and soot.

What do you find up there?

Is there a hothouse?

Are there alien hands

with deft brushes

pollinating stars?

Remember how

your tomatoes kept

yielding more planets?

Are there constellations

of exotic fruit now

you’ve reached the top?

Have you gone back

enough in space-time

to when you were alive?

The ladder is charred,

the hot air balloon

that held it up

is about to collapse.

The explosions are over.

Cai showers his head

with champagne, as his

100-year-old granny

watches on her cell phone.

Did you see it? He asks,

did you hear the whoosh,

the rat-tat-tat

at the starry door?

You can go back

to sleep now, he tells her.

Go back to sleep,

I tell you, but first,

if you’re hungry,

have a snack on one

of those quasars,

before you dream again

of the tumble

through air to

the stone landing,

fireworks the last

thing you hear.

Soft and hard ground etching, 2026

29.7 x 42.0 centimeters