Getting lost
in a poem is bothersome,
although it seems natural
that words would point out the emergency exits
as you buckle up and prepare for take-off,
so if something goes wrong, you have someone’s
preparation to hold onto. Before you watch elastic bands
stretch behind the flight attendants’ heads, you realize
that your toothbrush is still on the ledge above the sink,
and you force yourself to focus
on not panicking as the ground is torn from under you. But
at home, your toothpaste anticipates
being dropped into a nylon zippered bag, a gooey replacement
for Macaulay Caulkin trudging on slick kitchen floors
in flannel pajama pants and marveling over the television set
at disappearance happening without the wave of a wand
or a burst of light, just a power outage
and failure to remember that trouble
should follow you everywhere. This small dose of amnesia
triggers a few days of digging up every morsel necessary
to survive Darwin’s efforts to extinguish the existence
of a pocket-sized disaster, and before you know it,
the foam is on the flight, and you’re landing, and
you’re not in a plane, you’re in a poem.
Claiming bags packed with words carefully thrown together,
you dig for passports that you will exchange for access
to interpretation, and it is then that you realize
your stacks are jumbled and indistinct. You don’t know
why you’re here, or what you’re looking for, or even
how you got here. You step carefully
towards the customs officer who is squinting at you
with a hand outstretched,
and you apologize for misunderstanding words you swear
were never uttered:
“Excuse me.
What did you say?”