PHILADELPHIA
At the Philadelphia International Airport,
in the ground transportation bunker
with lines of green phones on the wall
and one narcoleptic employee for company,
we waited for a cab that never came.
Handed a strobing plastic puck, instructed to wait
for it to vibrate like a personal sexual aid
or summons to a good table at The Olive Garden,
I tried to think it was not new to the earth,
that it was not some weird phylum of shellfish
dug up from warm muck far away
from Philadelphia. I tried not to think
of lights atop towers pulsing their presence at night
so that planes could avert low flight disaster.
I tried not to think of the field
where one crashed when I was a kid,
that brief fire and the sirens which seemed lost
and then the sleep returning to me
though I resisted at the window,
though I hated it, though it took me
with no care for the world where things fell
and were lost and were not found
again. We waited in Philadelphia with luggage
that was not ours spilling out
with others who were ready for anger.
Ready for ragged air to rise hot
in the piping of their throats,
ready with ripe fusillades of fuck you
and where do you get off
and all of us guessing how long we were for the flu.
In Philadelphia we waited
for a cab that never came,
no ramp, no lift, no ride for you,
though on my knee I felt more than heard
the low hive-sound
announce our arrival
to the city and the night, to the wind's alien teeth.
About Me
- Paul
- Paul Guest is the author of four volumes of poetry and a memoir. His debut, The Resurrection of the Body and the Ruin of the World, was awarded the 2002 New Issues Poetry Prize. His second collection, Notes for My Body Double, was awarded the 2006 Prairie Schooner Book Prize. His third collection, My Index of Slightly Horrifying Knowledge, was published by Ecco Press/HarperCollins in 2008. His fourth collection, Because Everything Is Terrible, was published by Diode Editions. His poems have appeared in Harper's, The Paris Review, Poetry, Tin House, The Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. His memoir, One More Theory About Happiness, was published by Ecco in May 2010 and selected for the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Program. The recipient of a 2011 Guggenheim Fellowship and a 2007 Whiting Writers' Award, Guest lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.
3 comments:
I tried not to think of the field
where one crashed when I was a kid,
that brief fire and the sirens which seemed lost
and then the sleep returning to me
though I resisted at the window,
though I hated it, though it took me
with no care for the world where things fell
and were lost and were not found
again.
This made me cry. Possibly because I used to build airplanes possibly because I have allowed so many of them to fall from the sky in my poems. Regardless of the whys, this poem is lovely and achy and moving.
Rebecca
The words you've chosen to repeat are interesting because although they aren't 'particular' they ad to the whole. I'm finding this very interesting. Thank you. Victoria
At the Philadelphia Airport one time, drunk and wet from walking there in the rain at night, I waited for a plane to Chicago and knew that there was where I did not want to go.
I wanted to go where the girl I left behind in Philadelphia was going, but she was going to Israel to serve in the army there, and I had no use for war.
So I sat and waited in the Philadelphia Airport for a flight that would take me where I didn't want to go because where I wanted to go was no where I knew.
All the signs said Exit, Exit.
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