Jessica Ramer
Florida Air Museum Display
I, who need kids’ help when I turn on classroom
Lights, their baffling switches and dimmers making
Me appear dense, stop when I turn the corner,
Silent with pleasure.
Painted red, lines graceful and spare, it slumbers,
Wheels on tarmac. Even though overpasses
Make me feel faint, I have a sudden urge to
climb in its cockpit
Race down runways, gathering speed before I
Barrel over miles of sawgrass, feel its
Body dive headlong as its engine screams like
Jericho’s trumpets.
Then I look up: swastikas mark its tailfin.
Pilots dropped first bombs in September, ferried
Gunners strafing peasants in Poland, flew home
Safe in its belly.
Pohlmann’s Stukas, Elliot’s Four Quartets, slave-
Built plantations—splendor in ink and metal,
Sheaves emerging, tangled in darnel, rootlets
Nourished by mire.
Jessica Ramer is a third-year PhD student in poetry at the University of Southern Mississippi.
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