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Sample Poems by Lori Jakiela
Working the Red Eye, Pittsburgh to
Vegas
The man in the emergency exit row
has been drinking
from his own bottle of duty-free vodka
and because he was quiet about it,
kept his clothes on , and didn't hit
his call button even once
no one notices
until we land in Vegas
and he refuses to get off the plane.
He's sure we haven't
gone anywhere.
"You people think I'm a sucker," he says.
"I'm no sucker. I
paid good money for this."
He boarded in Pittsburgh, my home country.
In
Pittsburgh, we have two dreams:
to go to Vegas to live
and to go to Florida to
die.
The gate agents call the police.
The pilots are pissed.
The A-line flight
attendant
with the fake French name
twirls a pair of plastic handcuffs and says,
"These make me so-o-o hot."
My father, who stopped drinking years ago
but never found his way, loved
Vegas.
He'd carry a sweatsock full of good-luck
nickels through
security
and get stopped every time.
He died at home in a rented hospital
bed
in Pittsburgh, not Florida.
"Sir," I say to the drunk on the plane
who
squeezes his eyes shut
so he doesn't have to see me.
"Please put your shoes
on."
"Fuck you," he says. "I'm not going anywhere."
My Father the Machinist Said
You're smart. Use the
brains
God gave you.
I could wipe my ass
with what you know about
love.
Don't let the users
use you. Wise up.
See the world. Go places.
Watch out for cockroaches.
Use your brains, princess.
Buckle down. Fly
right.
Don't be like me.
Don't work with your hands.
Looking
for Life in the Classifieds
The ad read "Like to Travel?
Want to
Move to New York?"
Then, in small print,
"Now hiring flight attendants."
I'd flown twice, threw up both times.
I took a train from Pittsburgh to Florida,
coach not sleeper, 27 upright hours
because I was afraid to fly, couldn't swim,
had dreams about crashing in the ocean.
I knew what sharks did to
survivors
in the disaster flicks I loved growing up -
the sweet but sassy heroine
looks fine,
bobbing in her life preserver, and then
our hero tips her over to
find
her shapely legs chomped off
like two sticks of beef jerky.
Still, I was
turning 30, desperate,
a connoisseur of beer and want ads.
I had a masters
degree, I had experience --
part-time college instructor, reporter,
public relations
spinner,
I'd waited tables on and off since I was 12.
I wanted to live in New
York.
How hard could working a plane be
compared to a writing workshop,
compared to Bingo Night,
the Trafford Polish Hall, 1982
where a capacity
crowd
of 185 senior citizens blew smoke,
grumbled about the price of fried
cheese balls,
left nickel tips and got in fist fights
over whether or not the games
were fixed.
Mrs. Cupka was sure B12 had been pumped
full of lead because it
lolled around
on the bottom of the pile.
Mrs. Dzurka said Mrs. Cupka was full
of drecka
and that B12 came up twice a week,
but Mrs. Cupka was too senile to
remember.
If I could pry Mrs. Dzurka's
good-luck kewpie doll
out of Mrs.
Cupka's clenched fist
all those years ago,
I could handle almost
anything
the average airplane passenger
or shark could dish.
You must
revise your life, William Stafford said.
I tore out the ad.
I took the job.
A Flight Attendant's Lament
They told me I was
going to Paris
so why am I stuck in Atlanta, Georgia
in a tiki hut on Bobbie
Brown Boulevard
eating crab legs out of a dented bucket?
A guy in a blue
Hawaiian shirt
loads the jukebox with a $20
and plays Jimmy Buffett's "Why
Don't We
Get Drunk and Screw"
over and over and over
then sends me a
beer with a note that says, "Smile."
I raise the beer to say thanks, hold a crab leg up
in a salute, then ask the
bartender for a pen.
Somewhere there's an ocean.
Somewhere beauty's waiting.
On the note, I write back,
"I am smiling.
Sincerely,
Mona
Lisa."
For the Cab Driver Who Saved My Job and Quite Possibly My
Life
I reported to the wrong airport.
It was 5 p.m. in my beloved New
York.
The Grand Central looked
like a packed subway car.
The Van
Wyck, a clogged hive.
I told this to the scheduler on the phone.
His name was
Sheldon.
He was in Atlanta.
"Hotlanta!" Sheldon would say. Woot
Woot.
Sheldon hated New York, New Yorkers.
Sheldon talked like he was
chomping cotton.
If I didn't make it from LGA to JFK in an hour, Sheldon would
make sure I lost my job.
I'd never been fired from a job
and most days I hated
this one, but still.
"Home," I said to the cab driver
when he asked where I
needed to go,
and of course by then I was crying.
"What's wrong with you?" he
said,
his eyes in his rear-view mirror.
"What's your trouble?"
I told him everything.
"It's o.k.," I said finally, and wiped my face
on my
flammable blue polyester sleeve.
"I can go back to Pittsburgh. I can type.
I can
wait tables. I can get another job."
The cabbie's eyes were two coin slots,
his hands, two anchors on the
wheel.
"This person who says you have to
get to Kennedy," he
said.
"Doesn't he know this is New York?"
"He's in Atlanta," I said. "He doesn't care."
My cab driver was from Zimbabwe.
His English was edged, precise, better than
mine.
Maybe he remembered what is was like
to be helpless and far from
home.
Maybe it was something simple
and rare -- kindness.
He said,
"Atlanta. Ha!"
He said, "I will get you to Kennedy."
It was a vow, an oath. "As
God
will witness," he said. "I will get you there,"
a line he'd learned from the
movies.
And then he threw the car in drive and drove.
He drove over the berm,
off the side of the road.
He kept at the horn.
He stitched the cab in and
out,
rolled down his window
and waved his arm like a propeller.
When we
hit the Van Wyck,
he drove embankments
and the car tipped sideways.
I
tightened my seatbelt.
At Kennedy, he leaped out and tossed my bags
from the
trunk to the curb in one fluid move
like a shot-putter.
"Run!" he said. "You go!
Fuck them!"
I ran. I made it through security
and onto the plane just in time.
The A-line
flight attendant rolled his eyes
and said, "Nice of you to join us, princess."
The
first-class passengers looked up, scowled,
and checked their watches.
Within
minutes, I was strapped in my jumpseat
and the plane was lifting up,
all
impossible grace and light,
a miracle, really.
Training Film #2:
Spot the Terrorist!
We're playing "Spot The Terrorist!"
There are
prizes involved --
Fuzzy socks and earplugs,
travel-sized bottles
of hand
lotion and shampoo.
The film is a montage, a vacation slide show.
All the must-
see sights are people.
Face after face flashes the screen.
Most seem vacant. A
few ham it up -
a scowl, a squint.
Our flight instructor
hits Rewind,
then Play, says,
"These are actual
passengers, not actors."
Our flight
instructor says,
"Stay alert. Look for
little things,"
Rewind.
Play. She
says,
"Could you
spot the danger?"
Our flight instructor blinks a lot,
a light that's about to go out.
She's
southern, so the word spot
has two syllables,
which isn't dangerous
but
still.
Rewind.
Play.
The faces on the screen are numbered.
Number 2
looks like a grandmother,
paisley and curls.
Number 4, a college student
with his backpack shell.
9 is brown-skinned, dashiki'd.
10 is pale,
translucent as an anemone.
"When y'all see something
suspicious,
write
down the number,"
our flight instructor says.
"The one who gets the most
terrorists, wins."
What does danger look like?
Rewind.
What can you tell from just a face?
Play.
This is before September 11th,
so I think it's impossible, a joke
and write down every number.
When I hand over my list, our flight instructor
claps her hands and squeals. She says,
"Of course
they're all terrorists!
Way to trust your instincts!"
Then she hands me a $50 coupon
to use at the In-Flight Uniform
Shop
where I'll buy shoes, regulation black flats,
rubber-soled, sensible,
the kind of shoes made to run.