by Jacqueline Coleman-Fried
The green cotton nightgown—clean,
stuffed next to sweaty
T-shirts—is going home.
I hope not to hear again
the phone alert go off
in my gut, a morbid tuning fork.
I thank the cousins—sojourners
with me to this fête—who,
bent over phones, found
the fixer, the vans, the flights.
Thank the lover back home—pounding
head, twisted stomach—who pleaded,
Keep going.
On the road to Amman, another siren.
We enter a concrete capsule
by a gas station.
Close the door.
Author’s note: Recently I traveled to Israel for a family wedding. Just hours after the last dance, Israel and Iran began attacking each other. Israel’s airport closed, trapping me, and the whole country, under barrages of missiles and drones. On the road to Jordan, and a flight out, I endured one final air raid siren and shelter. Even escaping, there was no escape.
Jacqueline Coleman-Fried is a poet living in Tuckahoe, NY. Her work has appeared in The New Verse News, Sheila-Na-Gig, Nixes Mate, and Streetlight Magazine.
