Читать книгу Visiting Hours at the Color Line - Ed Pavlic - Страница 15

Flight 577 : Atlanta to Chicago : Seat 27 F

—after Raheem DeVaughn

In 27 D the woman beside me on AirTran

tells her year-old son in 27 E

you wanna see daddy

don’t touch that again A six-week-old

daughter in her arm

a cresent-shaped scar

on her throat appears thru frayed-end braids

she’s dipped in peroxide

Over the scar

a sleek-eyed tattoo with angular brows

Under what the eyes know in

cursive

about where the tattooed eyes’ mouth

would be and diagonal across the scar’s the word future

I’m helping with the boy’s belt

with one hand

and trying my damnedest to get a no-look

photo of the tatt with my phone

We taxi : the boy’s got one

earphone in his ear the other in his mouth

she asks me could I turn

the channel

to “Urban Blast” and make sure he doesn’t touch the control

—by the time we’ve got ourselves

up above the seatbelt sign

he’s out

and the earphone escapes his open mouth

the baby’s out too and the woman

closes her eyes

deep The future of what her throat knows

stares at me thru the braids and she nods to the music

her whole body nods baby’s sleep

her head doesn’t move

My right ear’s in the engine my left knows

the song :

suspended sentence pain handed down

that’s the sound goes round

and round

—my brother’s in the ground

bad-handed shuffle and a blank deck of fears

eye to eye with a falsetto sky

—women standing around broken

together and staring back at you like a jury of your mirrors