Poetry of Issue #8        Page 47

Losing It

I know not to sit by a window
during a tornado—
my closet closeting leather pocketbooks from Spain
shelters me in place.

I do like a window seat on an airplane
especially over the wing
I watch the flaps open with the lift—
steel pelicans gliding in the velocity.

I am in seat 14a, like Jennifer was.
I picked this seat rather than seat 13a,
silly I know.

It was in this seat, this airline
when the window exploded and Jennifer was partially sucked out.
What did she think in the ether? Who held her feet?
The magic of ruby slippers—
the stews pulled her back in but she died
when they landed in Philadelphia.

Ah, Philadelphia, a place hated by W.C. Fields.
How much is her loss worth?
There are tables in law books that measure the monetary loss
of a young person vs a grandma, an arm vs a leg.

When I was little my mother made me play outside when
she was having a bad day. I lost a Doris Day paper doll
in the vortex of the March wind. I was inconsolable.

My mother put me in the broom closet among the moth balls
and the Borax. She shut me up with a hairbrush and made me swear
not to tell my father when he came home from work.

She apologized and told me she lost it
like a paper doll sucked up in a maelstrom.