Tag: plane

Two Poems by Andrea Potos

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MY MOTHER’S NAME

Two days before the last, after
the seizure had rearranged
my mother’s bearings,
I sat beside her while
the young dark-haired nurse
fluffed her pillow, measured her pulse,
offered to apply
my mother’s signature lipstick,
the Revlon Hot Coral we both loved.
I listened as the nurse asked my mother
to say her name out loud,
and in a gravelly almost-whisper my mother
chose Penny Kosmos—her maiden name
spoken so readily as if she were already
winding back to her beginnings
without us, before me
or my sister, before my father,
back to her girlhood
even to the origin of space
and time, of a world
that so loved her in it.

*

FOR MY COLLEGE BOYFRIEND KILLED IN A PRIVATE PLANE CRASH AT AGE TWENTY-NINE

I see you tall and handsome still,
chestnut hair cut extra short
for your Navy duties those last years.
From the photo you sent me, I noted
a hairline receding just a little;
I like to think you’d eventually be balding
as your tall, professorial father was bald.
I like to think of you again, as my own still-long hair
thins and loses some dark sheen; I like to think of you
as one of us now—some added weight around the middle
perhaps, lines around the eyes and the mouth that maps
a generous life—an older man who once loved so well
an insecure girl-woman of nineteen whose long dark hair
whirled delightfully in the air while you drove her around the city
in your dashing red convertible.

*

Andrea Potos is the author of seven full-length poetry collections, most recently Her Joy Becomes from Fernwood Press and Marrow of Summer from Kelsay Books. A new collection from Fernwood entitled Belonging Songs will be published in 2025. New poems are forthcoming in Women Artists’ Datebook 2025, The Healing Muse, Braided Way, Delta Poetry Review, Midwest Quarterly, and the Paterson Literary Review.

The Bird in Concourse A by Caitlin O’Halloran

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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

Three Poems by E. Laura Golberg

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“The Terrible Man on the Plane”

My mother on the phone, complaining,
voice thick with cold, nasal passages thick,
resonating. “I should be in Hawaii,” she said.
“But I’m too ill. Flying back from Indiana,
last week, I sat next to this terrible man
on the plane who coughed and sneezed
all over me. He should not have been flying.
Now he’s ruined my holiday.”

I hung up, went to York Florist, ordered
a summer bouquet, signed it:
“Feel better soon, with many apologies,
The Terrible Man on the Plane.”

Two hours later, the phone rings.
She sounds like a young girl being courted,
coy, voice light and airy.
“I got flowers.” she said. “I looked at the note
and thought ‘How did he know?’”

*

Why I Didn’t Talk in the On-Line Class

The poetry class, sixteen of us,
was unusually silent–long pauses
where the teacher would ask
a question and no-one would answer.

I, myself, didn’t talk because out of one
of the little windows, peered the marriage
counselor I fired while my husband
and I were having terrible troubles.

That was ten years’ ago this summer.
We’d met with four different shrinks,
either he liked one or I did, but
we couldn’t agree. So, we stopped

looking. Now, still married and happy,
I was silent in class. I wonder
how many of the silent others
were former clients, too.

*

Stroke

Two different meanings, one: loving
caress over skin or fur; the other:

a blood clot somewhere in the brain.
Mine is in my occipital lobe. No soft

cuddle for me, just a harsh blind spot.
I thought I’d get used to it but three

weeks later, it’s just getting me down.
I tell myself ‘Getting used to it.’ will

take months, if not several years.
In my mind, I gently stroke my eyes.

*

E. Laura Golberg is a poet, originally from England, who has lived in Washington DC for over 50 years. Her work has appeared in Rattle, Poet Lore, Barrow Street, Birmingham Poetry Review, Spillway, RHINO, and the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics, among other places.