Flying.
A feeling of laying in an unmade bed.
Staring at Buddhist sutras
from floor to ceiling
slipping in and out one's consciousness.
Feeling the sutras
keep you alive.
The stewardess, a cameo appearance
in dark Chinese whispers, brought coffee,
lukewarm and annoyingly weak with powdered milk
and a glimpse of hauling about her darlings.
Made corny jokes about thick and thin. Her own choice
written on her body. In fluent French.
No idea where it came from. That feeling.
I loved her, briefly, put myself to work
emptied all this thinness.
Waiting, with sleep and in-flight magazine,
for better pastimes.
It came. High above the gold coast,
which reminded my neighbor of the complicated timing
of coming into the world elsewhere: mom's returning
from a trip to Papua New Guinea, her desire
to birth him in Australia, his first scream
in a Lockheed Hercules en route. And how he
two years ago – his pousse café a fait divers
for Quantas – was gripped by a fear of flying so intense
that he nailed to the floor, watched how the plane left
without him, to yet another continent.
...in an unmade bed... staring at
Buddhist sutras...
For me no alcohol.
Vascular problem requiring an understanding smile,
so thinks the stewardess.
*
8 pm: in den Hopsack, Grote Pieter Pot straat, Antwerp, Belgium
8 pm: in den Hopsack, Grote Pieter Pot straat, Antwerp, Belgium
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