I AM DYING / I AM DEAD

We: not the same as the peregrine / airplane, arriving one day / late despite our heavy bags. Despite weather / traffic controllers / waving their hands their / arms in unison. A book is not a sound / way to keep oneself warm / in the terminal with light. With light you can find / it usually. With light usually you / can find the switches that turn / the other ones on. / You said something / about dying in the void / of an airplane aisle, transcending even / the clouds even / the clouds above the clouds, how in the what / how in the / what were you saying? What level / of the elevator left you / in some mysterious beige? / How could you misuse / the ancestral legerdemain / on those drowsy security scoundrels, how / could it be / that easy?

I AM UNCHARACTERISTICALLY TIED / TO THIS CHAIN LINK FENCE

I tried to remove / myself from this fence. I tried to remove / the zip ties the rope / length the length / of a city I hardly / even know. How did I get / myself in this mess / is something I ask the stranger in the meat house / Is something I ask the stranger / stranger in the alley behind it. And by ask I mean once / asked because / of course I’m fastened still / to this goddamn holey fence. Other things / normally attached to a fence: a padlock / left from a faithless / lover, how about a flag / for the fallen / who have not gotten up? In another country, fences / replaced with the thought / of fences. / In another / city a boy / is walking his lonely / legs to the market for bread. I bet / he would love being caught / in a fence. Him and his bread all / wrapped in the calm / steel, all shoes but no / socks. The boy has no / socks and this / is okay to think about / carefully, with my eye on something / sharp in the distance. A way to cut / myself loose, a way to feel / deft like a planned escape / artist, blindfolded and filled / with all kinds of lead.

Dillon J. Welch is an MFA candidate in Poetry at NYU. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in CutBank, inter|rupture, Jellyfish, Phantom Limb, Pinwheel and other journals. He is currently Editor of AMRI and Poetry Editor of Swarm. Find him at: www.dillonjwelch.com.