He can still fly, and squeeze coal into diamonds, and see through walls and women’s clothes, but sometimes, speeding through clouds, he loses control and tumbles like a spent bullet end over end, or forgets where he’s going and has to take a taxi home.
He lives alone--Clark Kent, retired reporter--but believes spies sneak into his room and steal his shoes.
Old Daily Planets heap up in his hall.
The Health Department calls about cockroaches. He shoves the inspector through a wall.
When Jimmy Olson dies, then Perry White, he wants to die too. But Earth lacks kryptonite.
Three knives shatter on his wrists. Eight bullets of ascending caliber pink off his skull.
He jumps in front of a train. It derails, killing fifty; he walks away.
His tantrums topple tall buildings. The SWAT Team sent for him retreats with casualties.
The CIA finds Lois in a nursing home. Kidneys shot and colon gone, she says she’ll help.
A helicopter lowers he wheelchair into the rubble where Superman sleeps.
She strokes his cheek. “Superman? It’s me.”
He jerks upright, eyes baffled. “Old lady--who are you?”
“I’m your mother, Superman.”
His brow softens. “I missed you, Mom.”
“Do you remember Lois Lane?” she asks.
He scrunches up his face--still young and handsome as a boy’s. “Kinda,” he says. “She was pretty.”
“Lex Luther has her. Up there.” Lois points at Cassiopeia, glittering. “Can you see her?”
Superman squints. “I think so . . .”
She takes his hand, still strong as steel. “Lois needs you, Superman. You’ve got to save her.”
“Lois,” he whispers, and stands.
She straightens his cape.
“Who are you?” he asks.
“Your mother, Superman. Save Lois. Please.”
“Save Lois,” he says. Stretching his hands above his head, he bends his knees.
“Fly, Clark,” she says, then grips his cape, and lets his leap yank her up out of her wheelchair.
Her heart slows as the air thins. Then it stops, her hands relax, and she falls like the last booster of a rocket that, an instant later, begins tumbling end over end toward its home in the stars.
--Charles Harper Webb, 2003
To Charles Harper Webb's chapbook