Issue One

Poem by Dave Shortt

February 15, 2023

Jets

bound west as Sacajaweja’s reconnaissances:
a flow of metals,
a flight of resources,
blurring the portraits on coins,
upwelling with appraisals
of spices & cultures,
till ubiquitous as sparrows they become habituated
in the economy leg-room of anywhere helping mediate a curiosity grounded in the primate homebody, jets uplift from earth as mastery of several languages, while natives try to understand the fire-&-brimstone dialect of the F Series, & the mechanics by which tourists will arrive at a quantized solution of cold beer, relaxing in a slow waterhole drink, oblivious to a coveting of watches & their digital entry into dickerings over the price of leisure another jet’s shadow sets off a malignant division of cells in shantytowns flown over, whose water is a perplexing isotope in groomed snow, flagged with recreational risk, where moguls curve the airspace into bumpy rides shared with all the possible colors of ice cream offered beside vanilla & slaves a snowbird sings:    ‘could the spring sun    ever melt an addiction    to opiates or war?    or are you now a concept    of the speed of sound?’ crying out from a papaya, the 3rd World had been hanging like a tiny mobile of aluminum debris from a frostbitten ear (an ear listening for a crashlanding & for the moan of landing gear touching a pollen-slippery runway beneath an inedible star

About Dave Shortt

Dave Shortt is a long-time writer from the USA whose work has appeared over the years in a number of online and print literary-type venues, including Beatific. More of his poems can be found in New Note, Mercurius, Collidescope, Poetry Salzburg Review, and Sulfur.