Airport, Alone — Jcagney
the frayed petal of his text message
krinkles in my palm:
I caught the wrong flight to los angeles
now we’re separated this leg of our journey.
I stand in the lobby of the airport, lonesome
staring at the words
as if they might change while being read.
Outside, strikers whitecap the tarmac
the sharks teeth of their signs rise, fall in argument
anger ruffling the corduroy of their jackets.
Beyond them, the glowing cruise ship
of a grocery store across the avenue.
Further still, the horizons dark meditation
of rain. A temple of clouds descend,
all bedhead cumulous and black as asphalt.
Heavy emerald rain corkscrews the air
haloing the strikers raised fists.
They hammer the glass walls
until white veins web across them
snapping loud as ice in thaw,
I hear the rain as if something in the distance
cooks. Imagine a night flight to Los Angeles
floating mute on soot colored clouds
outlined by yellow sun at dusk.
My phone crushes in my hands like fabric
My face prays with tears.
**
I’m greatly inspired by Richard Hugo. His letter and dream poems especially. Initially, when I began exploring poetry I didn’t realize things like letters and dreams could work as poems. Now when I’m hit with big budget, vivid dreams I diagram them in a journal and cut them down into poems. Some residue of dreams remain I haven’t recycled into poems: the dream of driving across a bridge with my father in a rainstorm, Frank Sinatra being projected onto overhead traffic screens. The one with me swimming through a bayou. The one where I’m visited by my dead mother and the bowl of food on the coffee table begins boiling with insects… Dreaming doesn’t happen often enough– usually I lose the fabric of them after I wake. But sometimes they stick, leaving clear imprints and a nice narrative arc such as Airport, Alone.
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