GATE 27 PRINT

The flight to Miami was delayed three hours
and I was in black. Customer service
ate Burger King French fries, applied
Nivea hand cream. It’s easy

to get irate. Could god smell my fake tan
when he said: There’s a 6:55
to Ft. Lauderdale. Take it. The traveler
in front was a white boy with dreads

and a wooden earring. I offered him
a granola bar if he’d let me cut.
I asked if his boots were vegan. He said:
No, they’re boots of Spanish leather.

He said: Customer service
is a capitalist microcosm.
He said: Jim Morrison died
at the same age as Kurt Cobain.

At eighteen I said those things too.
Through words, little gods pop up,
even in the late-teenage sections.
Isn’t that the way we remember history?

I just want to go part by part. I don’t think
there is a pattern to be found, but I like
the method of constructing tent poles
and refashioning fabric around them.

It’s very important to me
that there be a sense of unity.
It’s certainly not stopping
or holding on.

Melissa Broder is the author of When You Say One Thing But Mean Your Mother (Ampersand Books, February 2010). She curates the Polestar Poetry Series and is Chief Editor of La Petite Zine. Broder won the Jerome Lowell Dejur Award in 2008 and the Stark Prize for Poetry in 2009. She received her BA from Tufts University and is currently in the MFA program at CCNY. By day, she works as a literary publicist. Find her online at: www.melissabroder.com.