THE PLANE

                  1

When stripped to your socks,
all your coins in the tub,
you are moments away from being a terrorist.


                  2

I do a lot of listening.
I am a good listener.
I am entering an omelet phase.


                  3

When someone feels they know you well enough
they might bear your children.
I was thinking about this when the plane took off.


                  4

The girl next to me is Russian.
Stewardesses aren’t stupid.
It stinks in here like balsamic vinegarette.


                  5

The plane’s wing looks like a stage prop,
like a pretend wing, like a child’s idea
of a wing.


                  6

The stewardess took from a passenger
a sugared walnut, and ate it.
The passenger had a bread sack full of them.


                  7

I’m looking out the window at the wing again.
It’s like looking into someone’s
girlfriend’s ear, as she’s sleeping.


                  8

I’m sound asleep when they come through
with the drinks.  Dreaming
I’m having drinks on this airplane.


                  9

Grown men who carry sugared walnuts.
Grown men who offer walnuts
on airplanes.


                  10

The back of the plane smells
.What kind of work does
the word smells do?


                  11

The man in 13C uses “ballsy”
twice in five minutes.  Over
the wing’s edge, the snow-dusted mountains.


                  12

When people use the word “ballsy”
it always makes me smile.  Far off
below, the snow-dusted mountains.



I USED TO BE IN LOVE WITH YOU
A forkful of breakfast potatoes goes back
across the table, carefully,
like a helicopter,
forming little ripples on
the surface of your coffee.



JAGUAR
“Some day I will own a Jaguar.
I don’t know if it will be black
or silver.  But it will have
wooden seats and a rubber
steering wheel.”

The man had spoken.

He was lying on his back
in the wet grass with the wet leaves
and bits of dirt on his face
and jacket.  He was looking up
at me, at all of us.
We were at the train stop.

He looked like he’d been dragged
or maybe just pushed from a car.

“Rubber seats,” he said,
looking up.

The train had stopped, opened its doors,
closed its doors, and gone on.


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