To order A Deed to the Light
Read a sample poem:
MELTING POT
As the alarm shrilled through the twelve-seater,
as the pilot scrambled for his manual,
I wanted someone to stand up
and lead us in song,
or possibly a prayer
but we sat beneath our personal
air nozzles, unable to shake
our useful habit of reserve.
Beside me a man read Newsweek.
A girl pulled out her barf bag
and I thought of sending my voice out
like a skater on a pond to say something
true and beautiful and daring,
how not a sparrow, maybe,
falls without notice,
but our plane was yo-yoing
like a heart machine gone bonkers
graphing the steep W’s
of our collective fall
and my voice burrowed
for safety in my chest
as I turned, we all turned
to our captain, a simple boy in earphones
fighting to steer the little duck
paddling for its life
in a dark, anonymous sky
and I thought how odd it was
that our names would appear
together in the papers,
like the cast of a musical,
we who died alone, with no ritual and no touching.
