en route to Austin
Jan Ball
en route to Austin where you finally
have an address and a telephone number,
the Mexican man beside me dozing in
shiny tan alligator shoes and a huge,
gold medallion at the neck of his
open-neck shirt, nestled in curly black hair,
a bald baby three seats ahead of me
molded into his mother’s torso the way
you were and later your brown hair your
own, not wiry like Dad’s side or dishwater
blonde on mine then after you left home
and returned that summer I had to leave
the table when you showed us those photos
with your head shaved; I sat at the computer
with tears in my eyes trying to compose
myself and then later we all went to the show
to see “Quills” with Geoffrey Rush, Geoffrey,
the same as you and Australian, too, his eyes
filled with passion and pain, the Marquis de Sade
dying in his own excrement after compulsively
writing with it on the walls of his solitary cell
(I’ve read some children play with their own
feces, too, but you never did) and I wish I wasn’t
imprisoned in this seat with the seat belt sign on,
as we start our descent into Austin.
Jan Ball
en route to Austin where you finally
have an address and a telephone number,
the Mexican man beside me dozing in
shiny tan alligator shoes and a huge,
gold medallion at the neck of his
open-neck shirt, nestled in curly black hair,
a bald baby three seats ahead of me
molded into his mother’s torso the way
you were and later your brown hair your
own, not wiry like Dad’s side or dishwater
blonde on mine then after you left home
and returned that summer I had to leave
the table when you showed us those photos
with your head shaved; I sat at the computer
with tears in my eyes trying to compose
myself and then later we all went to the show
to see “Quills” with Geoffrey Rush, Geoffrey,
the same as you and Australian, too, his eyes
filled with passion and pain, the Marquis de Sade
dying in his own excrement after compulsively
writing with it on the walls of his solitary cell
(I’ve read some children play with their own
feces, too, but you never did) and I wish I wasn’t
imprisoned in this seat with the seat belt sign on,
as we start our descent into Austin.
