INCREASING TURBULENCE

by Betsy Mars

 

 

“we live and move and have our being / here, in this curving and soaring world / that is not our own” –Julie Cadwallader Staub, "Blackbirds"

Each body with its own gravity, each a potential
projectile, catapulting beyond our limits.
We pin on wings, ignore warnings, leave
our belts uncinched, bang on overhead bins.

 
Oxygen masks dangle like buttercups, lines tangled 
rice noodles, seatbacks cracked, someone’s hair floats
feathering above. In galleys: scattered wine bottles, 
kiwi slices, coffee urns, snacks, the aftermath.
 
If we could see the air ahead would we swerve, 
fly below, rise above? How many words 
for this invisible curve are there in
blackbird tongue, imperceptible to us?
 
We weather the storm. Again, ask for 
mercy, oscillate, tally the toll. 

Betsy Mars is a prize-winning poet, a photographer, and assistant editor at Gyroscope Review. whose poems can be found in numerous online journals and print anthologies. She has two books, Alinea, and In the Muddle of the Night, co-written with Alan Walowitz. Betsy is currently and sporadically working on a full-length manuscript titled Rue Obscure.

SO TWO GOATS WERE STUCK ON A BEAM UNDER A BRIDGE

by Jill Crainshaw

Amidst a turbulent week on Wall Street, two goats were found stranded on a bridge beam in western Pennsylvania on Tuesday. Goat photo source: Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission via NPR.

stormy

with a chance of thundersnow

these are the headlines we are living in

curators clamoring for credibility on facebook fake newsfeeds

talking heads trading on trending turbulence

the bald eagle has landed—on the mariners shoulder—looking for bears

hugging the life out of

fragile economies

while easter bunnies on the loose quadruple a towns investment

a teenagers hair creates a buzz breaking into the prophetic sound of her silence

as bells toll to remember the king who had a dream that one day—one day—

and a presidents goldilocks

blow in the

wind

Jill Crainshaw is a professor at Wake Forest University School of Divinity in Winston-Salem, NC.