Airplane Mode

Taking off, the passenger plane

grunts like a sow and rattles
like a San Francisco streetcar.

Tacoma's port comes into view--
orange cranes, white warehouses bigger
than football pitches, a stack

puffing white smoke like
an old sailor. Shaggy green
Puget Sound island appears.

On the steel-blue water:
one fishing boat, one container ship,
both as still as sleeping cats.

Through horizontal pink and blue
smears, dark eyebrows arch:
tops of the Cascade mountain range.

Wet gridded neighborhoods
show, spotted with dark evergreens
and yellow & orange puffs

of dying leaves. Far out,
the freeway curves past
the light blue Tacoma Dome,

which looks like a hemispheric
quiz-show buzzer. Now white
clouds curtain the whole scene

& a voice cautions us
again to put all of our devices
on airplane mode.

On the Leg to Dublin

Something is rotten in Amsterdam.
Probably my clothes during a day
and its night of air(less) travel.

The Amsterdam airport is almost
as empty as the American
president's head. One more leg

to go, I go through a gate only
to get on a bus, which takes me and
the rest of a considerable herd

past an epic line of florescent
hyphens in the dark. They suggest
an endless industrial pause

for no effect. From the bus I
see that over the airplane
hangs a moon that looks like

an egg with problems. Clouds
soil it. Out of the bus I go up
some iron steps to my seat,

which is 2-B, or not 2-B: much
is contingent upon the mood
of an Irish attendant on unpaid

overtime. She makes the woman
seated in front of me stow
a stuffed toy dolphin overhead.

Her co-attendant Conor re-counts
the passengers as a Dutch man
in a yellow vest tells the aircraft's

captain he's going to write a report.
He says several more times, "I'm
going to write a report." The aircraft

seems to fall asleep. I think Hamlet
should have traveled more, gotten
out of the castle into the world,

away from swords and ghosts
and other castle creeps. "Tighten
your seat belt," the Irish attendant

tells me. Her last name's McCarthy.
If she knows about Hamlet, she
probably thinks he's a bit of a wanker,

an English-speaking Dane too old
to live at home who talks to skulls.
The Dutch man in the yellow vest

leaves. Let the report-writing begin.
Let Conor and McCarthy prepare for
takeoff. Let the leg to Dublin commence.


hans ostrom 2019

Boxes

WOODEN CRATES

Boxes full of possibilities
when emptied. Cupboards
or bookshelves for
the lean of budget.

CEREAL

So much packaging
So much printed matter
Bag inside box
So much surreal imagery
Just to deliver cooked grain and sugar.

ALLEY

Two empty produce boxes
fight in an alley,
slamming their rectangled
cardboard together, trying
to cut each other with corners.

A dishwasher comes out
for a smoke-break,
clothes damp from water
and grease, and separates them.
"What's this all about?"
is the dishwasher's question.
The boxes, they/re not saying anything.

LUNCH

Our parents didn't go in
for lunch boxes painted
Disney or Wyatt Earp.
They sent us to school
with silver or black lunch pails
shaped like barns. The idea
was schoolwork. I think they
were in a hurry to make us old.

AIRPLANE

Black box, bottom of the ocean,
holds its secrets like sinister jewelry.
Malfunction, malevolence, murder?
why why why why why why
cheeps the beacon, voice of the
box.


hans ostrom 2016