Insults for the Space Station

Nerd Eden

Dweeb Valhalla

Trillion-dollar O2 bubble

Temple of withering muscle

Low-orbit/rate-of-sex zone

Food court with a lab

Greenhouse without trees

PhD hive

Xenogym

’naut yacht

Aluminum Olympus

Gondola to nowhere

Floaty science dungeon

Chariot of Solitude

Sardine can with a view

Tetris piece-ass looking space sleigh

Icarus’ liquor store

Airlocked clown car

Orbital fedora

NASA’s folly

Interplanetary colonialism’s inevitable on-ramp

Space-jerk club hut

Zero-g bell-jar

Airborne lobster trap

Rocketeer shithouse

Gyroscopic jalopy

Solar panel-plated port-a potty

Snob oasis

Galactic detritus

The nastiest satellite

Lucifer’s penthouse

Earthquake-proof tanning bed

Environment in which hourglasses are worthless

Rickety, persnickety, malodorous, incommodious token hotel of pan-nationalist dreamery

Tower of Babel 2

Astrocradle

Wannabe moon

Wooden Sunrises

V of mechanical geese.

Peach orchard

picked clean by wind. Universe

overdosed on galaxies. Pity

the wealthy marrying

for even more money. Wooden sunrises

made by stagehand

yanking on a rope.

A lobster tank full of handguns

passed entering a gun show.

Horse wrapped in wallpaper

standing in a pasture. Firing squad

in front of an aquarium.

Kangaroo pouches

full of gold bars.

Giraffes so tall

they graze on the stars.

Suitcase full of hourglasses

you don’t know have shattered

until you pull it off the luggage carousel

and hear the broken glass.

A lethal fall

cushioned only

by Easter basket grass.

Mark Leidner's most recent book is the short story collection Under the Sea (Tyrant Books, 2018), called “virtuosic” by the New York Times. He is also the author of a book of poetry Beauty Was the Case that They Gave Me (Factory Hollow, 2011), a book of aphorisms The Angel in the Dream of Our Hangover (Sator, 2011), and feature films. His latest film, Empathy, Inc. (2018), a sci-fi thriller, screened at the 2018 Austin Film Festival, has earned praise in the A.V. Club and the Chicago Tribune, and will be released theatrically in 2019.