Poem by Colin Dodds

Seatbelts and Life Rafts

Airlines drop me to my day.
The jet engines hum a new weariness
into the music of morning.

In the terminal, I feel sanctified,
or at least justified,
by the fuel being burned on my behalf.

For I am a jealous god,
or at least a spoiled child,
and I demand a fatted calf.

Jet engines sing of disaster,
conjure up all my cheap cleverness
and shabby moral choices.

In the din, stewardesses tell us a lie
about seatbelts and life rafts—so much effort and noise
for something as fragile as vanity.

The intercom pings in a new age of euphemism.
And I am so alone, when everyone
puts on their headphones.

Colin Dodds grew up in Massachusetts and completed his education in New York City. He’s the author of several novels, including Windfall and The Last Bad Job, which the late Norman Mailer touted as showing “something that very few writers have; a species of inner talent that owes very little to other people.” Dodds’ screenplay, Refreshment, was named a semi-finalist in the 2010 American Zoetrope Contest. His poetry has appeared in more than a hundred forty publications, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. The poet and songwriter David Berman (Silver Jews, Actual Air) said of Dodds’ work: “These are very good poems. For moments I could even feel the old feelings when I read them.” Colin lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife Samantha.

Allison Goldin is an artist living in Cambridge. Her work is a collection of spontaneous drawings from the imagination. The most common link throughout her art are the semi-recognizable creatures scattered amongst and bringing together the surrounding doodles. She is currently studying Illustration at The School of Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.