After a night of therapeutic bottle and blunt passing
He wakes on earth at 5AM
In a lumpy bed
He goes to the airport in his overalls
Brandishing a handkerchief
He scrubs the thick plastic windows
With long handles bruises
He watches the jets take off
They move hot through the endless sky
With purpose

A(llison) Whittenberg is a poet and novelist (Life Is Fine, Sweet Thang, Hollywood and Maine, Tutored all from Random House, and The Sane Asylum from Beatdom). She lives in VA.

Image by Joe Ravi, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons