We don’t need nasa…

“In what could be compared to Elon Musk’s Space X’s efforts to build a new colony on Mars, men in boats arrived on the edge of the known world to embark on that new experiment.” - Sussan Ley, Liberal Party Leader, Invasion Day 2025

We don't need nasa…

 we need cigarettes

we don't need nasa

space travel has been outsourced

to the company that makes AI generated

hologram buskers

that douse the city in sound

and the shopping centre toilets

that make you watch 2 ads

before you're allowed to shit

4 if you want to shoot up

 

owned by the guy

who leaves the atmosphere for fun

who smokes cigars who says

jiu jitsu grounds him

looks like he'd flinch

to a raised fist

 

I'm just jealous

only travel I do is

on a bus that gushes

black mist and is

2 hours late

to a place where

I plead to a computer

 

earth is flat from my view

past main street, which is

stores covered in blue tarps

haunted by customers’ ghosts

only presence is a hand print

on the dust in the window

or paint flaking like my dry

skin that hasn't seen water for a while

trying to save to live closer

to the computer

in a block with less bitey rats

Nathan mudyi Sentance is a Wiradjuri writer and librarian from the Mowgee clan who grew up on Darkinjung Country. He writes about memory, resistance, and history-making in colonial institutions. His work has appeared in Cordite Poetry, Griffith Review, Australian Poetry Journal and Meanjin. He was a finalist for the 2025 Gosford Art Prize and won the 2024 Oodgeroo Noonuccal Poetry Prize.