Poem Dreamt on a Plane, or, Fragility

This piece appears in the Los Angeles Review of Books Quarterly Journal: The Occult, No. 22 

To receive the LARB Quarterly Journal, become a member or purchase at our bookstore.

¤

Poem Dreamt on a Plane, or, Fragility

There was a mouse. I didn’t have eyes.

I was sitting in an aisle seat, got up, blocked the passageway,

told passengers: ¡there’s a mouse in this plane!

Not even the mouse cared —

she lived in this plane.

She approached, her whiskers sensing thunderstorms.

I sat there, waiting. Then, I woke.

Got my computer out, began writing

there was a mouse, changed the font from Times

to Garamond. Sensing —

years after she walked into the Washington Square Park

fountain with all her clothes on in late October,

drunk from red wine she’d downed at the dinner

I told her I’d stopped loving her,

perhaps never loved her, she cried

so much her eyes puffed up like she didn’t have eyes,

& I didn’t do, or say, anything —

there’s a chance she’ll read this.

G,

I’m trying to return my fragility

but I don’t have a receipt. I was oblivious

to apologizing — I’d misunderstood.

You are not a cashier. I should never

have said “you’re crazy,” “jealous,” “stupid,”

“calm down,” drank so much. Somehow

I end up pointing at my father, uncles,

grandfathers, but it’s me who opened my mouth.

I’m sorry. 

¤

Javier Zamora's first collection of poems is called Unaccompanied.