Looking down
At puff‐pastry clouds
From a porthole window,
Utterly still yet traveling more
Than five hundred miles per hour,
Warm, calm, and contemplating a misdemeanor
In the back of the plane—who would it harm
To get fingered by one of these men?
As compared to riding in an automobile
Wilbur Wright called flying “real
Poetry.” One cannot be sure of his sex
Life, but he seems to have been complex
Enough never to marry
Or make love in a lavatory
During violent turbulence.
It’s poetry or it’s
Novel. Either way flying wears
Me out, not unlike the years
I’ve spent watching naughty wives
Or husbands with perfect lives
Walk down the center aisle.
I keep wishing that one day while
Some man is ogling my dyed‐blond hair,
He’ll die right there in the air.