Reading on a Plane

Colin Dodds
Featured image: I wish to go beyond the fire that burns me © Nora Beck 2019

 

Ghost feathers, ghost fetters
orange cross-hatched prairie-floor towns
aligned to far-off ridge or favored constellation
In vastness, how to choose?

On an airplane by the rear lavatory
I wonder what the chicken scratch
of civilization spells,
wonder what a pretty girl means
while the scatter ignites and the earth
becomes another earth

Plastic pen, burning fuel vaulted miles in the air
Ground speed 707 MPH, tailfin bobbing, frosty plain
of dried-riverbed serpents, box-canyon land
eaten to tombs and towers, bug chitter,
shrub gossip, odd rubble, improbable syllables

Cheyenne, Albuquerque, Wichita, Provo, Sioux Falls

Names define words
to give us words to define the names,
like workers punching each others’ time cards
so they can drink past lunch

Something does slide
past undetected
But who misses it?
 

Colin Dodds is a writer with several novels and books of poetry to his name. He grew up in Massachusetts and lived in California briefly, before finishing his education in New York City. Since then, he’s made his living as a journalist, editor, copywriter and video producer. Over the last seven years, his writing has appeared in more than three hundred publications including Gothamist, Painted Bride Quarterly, and The Washington Post, and praised by luminaries including Norman Mailer. His poetry collection Spokes of an Uneven Wheel was published by Main Street Rag Publishing Company in 2018. Colin also writes screenplays, has directed a short film, and built a twelve-foot-high pyramid out of PVC pipe, plywood and zip ties. One time, he rode his bicycle a hundred miles in a day. He lives in New York City, with his wife and daughter. You can find more of his work at thecolindodds.com.