by Casey Redcay | Poetry | Spring 2019
We go down
into a land of swamp and ruffle
I hide in my middleness
overlookable, a noiseless witness
hanging over families
like a forgotten Mickey Mouse balloon
smiling though no one is paying me to
I am coming home, Orlando
he greets me:
a catcall
from a beat-up truck
snake tongue but slower
a voice that drags
like a stranger’s hand on my back
I will come home to someone
my man is the one
who brings me hotel soap
shiny and papered
labeled
until placeless
piling on my shelf
my precious
my lonesome body
made clean
and still alone
but clean
my disaster spreading
like a suburban housing development
eating the land under us
spreading like the terror on his face
the man next to me stiffening
the air getting even staler
the plane rattling between clouds
his face squeezing like an orange
in an invisible fist until we go down and
everything stops.
Wilder Voice Magazine 