Tag: flying

Two Poems by Lynn Glicklich Cohen

~ ONE ART: a journal of poetry ~ 1 Comment

Another Sparrow

Another sparrow
hits glass, flies away
stunned to die
like the husband
of a woman I knew, a pillar
of his community. Left her
with five children
and gambling debts.

After the first few
I call a service
that installs peel and paste
film sheets in patterns
birds can see the way
we see guard rails
or blinking arrows—
row of white dots, dashes
a coded message
on every pane.

They tell me my brain
will adapt and I’ll stop seeing
them. I don’t have that kind
of time or faith
in what I’m told.
So I move the feeders further
from the house, hoping
for fewer dead birds,
feathers in flower beds.

I wonder if the woman
whose husband died
ever stops wondering
where he thought
he was going.

*

You Still Can

A peach pink line cuts through the sky at dusk,
a plane coming in for a sunset landing, so many
humans having been somewhere else. If I were not
already here, I’d want to be home.

I don’t travel anymore. I make excuses:
the cost, my dog, flying, inconvenience, discomfort.
It’s gotten embarrassing, like the clatter
of empty bottles, their skinny necks, residual fumes.

I awake with a spider-legged dread.
I belong in a story they won’t let me forget.
Another gathering of Jews bullet-sprayed.
Ancestral warnings. Shocked not surprised.

Hiding is one way to survive but no way
to live. I stay home, sweep crumbs, feed
the dog, pay bills. I fold sheets, make toast.
A plane? You mean you can go anywhere?

*

Lynn Glicklich Cohen is a poet from Milwaukee, WI. A once-upon-a-time social worker, a perennial cellist and semi-retired Rolfer, her poems have been published in Brushfire Literature and Arts Journal, Birmingham Arts Journal, Cantos, El Portal, Evening Street Review, Front Range Review, Grand Journal, Oberon, ONE ART, Peregrine, The Midwest Quarterly, The Phoenix, The Red Wheelbarrow, St. Katherine’s Review, Thin Air Magazine, Trampoline, Whistling Shade, and others. www.lynnglicklichcohenpoet.com

The Bird in Concourse A by Caitlin O’Halloran

~ ONE ART: a journal of poetry ~ 1 Comment

The Bird in Concourse A

The bird in Concourse A has been here so long,
it scarcely remembers the outside world.
A security guard tried many times
to capture it with a net,
but every time it flew away,
seemingly happy with the lot it was given.

Here, it lives among weary travelers
who drag their suitcases behind them,
carry neck pillows purchased at newsstands,
and sit by the gate for flights that are always delayed.

It likes to drink from the dregs
of a McDonald’s soda machine,
bathe in the drinking fountains,
and watch the conveyor belt
where baggage spills onto a silver riverbed,
like water cascading over rocks.

*

Caitlin O’Halloran is a biracial Filipino-American writer living in Rochester, New York. Her poetry has been published in literary magazines, including Third Wednesday, Vast Chasm Magazine, The Basilisk Tree, Apricity Magazine, and Remington Review. caitlinohalloran.com

Searched by Laurel Benjamin

~ ONE ART: a journal of poetry ~ 1 Comment

Searched

Freshly lopped off like prey
I’m caught once again at SEATAC
baggage searched
like I have a mark on my forehead
saying “stop me.”

I can hear the engines roar
picture my plane
like an owl trying not to be seen—
it will carry me to the island.

I have nothing to declare
except the loss of my mother
stomach turbulence
as the employee pulls out packing cubes
trying to locate an offence.

He zips open my toiletries kit—
“What’s this for?” he asks of the face cream.
The one my mother used.

I need to make the connection
a whole day flying
over the ring of fire
as if each volcano
will reawaken.

*

Laurel Benjamin is a native of the San Francisco Bay Area, where she invented a secret language with her brother. She has work forthcoming or published in Lily Poetry Review, Black Fox, Word Poppy Press, Turning a Train of Thought Upside Down: An Anthology of Women’s Poetry, South Florida Poetry Journal, Trouvaille Review, The Fourth River, Limit Experience, California Quarterly, Mac Queens Quinterly, among others. Affiliated with the Bay Area Women’s Poetry Salon and the Port Townsend Writers, she holds an MFA from Mills College.