—For Kris Sealey and Jerome Clarke
I will be the first
to admit it doesn’t
matter. No one will die
for your sins, I will (probably)
not hit rage altitude
and crack you open, listen
to your organs fall
still. Sadly, you are
still behind me, talking
as the plane lifts. You don’t
have your seat
-belt on and I hope
I don’t want turbulence
to flight your body
up and outwards
from itself. I just finished
a seminar where America was
the plane and blackness
the fuel turning into
exhaust, making the engine
twist. This has nothing to
do with you, but I wish
you were exhaust, you
became carcinogens and heat
far from me. How sad to be born
into a skin with this colonial
mind, this need to own
people like coins, stuffed
in my pocket and kept
for some violent
novelty. I have not shaped
myself into something
worth love. Maybe I need
the core to burn, even these poems
to fume and find something
in our brokenness.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 27, Issue 6.
Donald Pasmore is the editor-in-chief of 149 Review and is an assistant editor of Poet Lore. He has work published or forthcoming in Permafrost, Harpur Palate, Cherry Tree, The Shore, storySouth, and others. He received his BA from Salisbury University and is working on his MFA at Western Michigan University.
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