–
TRYING TO REMEMBER THE NAME OF SOME POEM
WITH ORANGES IN IT (OR THE SCENT OF ORANGES
OR ORANGE BLOSSOMS)
Dear Pritch! Today I read your poems. I feel alright.
I feel a little guilty I’m not as bright as the sun.
This plane flies me over the redwoods, and all
I can think about is the David in Florence
with his round ass. It’s the thoughts we share that ground us.
David! I’m wrapped in a soured yellow blanket;
It’s keeping my legs warm. I don’t want to hold this plane
beneath the sun. I want to ride the wind currents
up to Uranus’ Shakespearean moons. Oh Victorine!
Oh Tiberius! Oh Graccus Oh Tiburon, you!
One day I will disembark from this plane with a plan
and an orange to hand you. There is bitterness
in food. I least want to die in a plane crashing
into the night, the flower’s moon. The cliff side
opening up to hold our bodies entombed. You
are my great friend and I know almost nothing
about you. Do you have a brother who loves
to look like you? This plane is rushing through
the air and it’s full of strangers with whom I
might die if we hit some nasty turbulence
or the pilot needs to pay his dues. At the beginning
of every journey, I imagine every person I love
surrounded by glowing white light keeping them
safe and afloat. I picture this plane buoyed by magical
manna from my brain-heaven just in case
it helps. I’m most afraid of the time it would take
to fall from the sky: so much space to make the wrong
decisions before death. Would my Mom prefer
a phone call for presence during my final moments
as she was at my first? Or would the crashing metal,
the strangers calling out to their Gods,
haunt her for life? I couldn’t live with myself
if I peed my pants. It is one of my personal goals
not to piss myself in the face of death.
If I die by firing squad I will stand up straight
and die dry. I’ll hold it like a real hero.
–
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Trenna Sharpe is originally from Chattanooga, Tennessee where she graduated from the University of Tennessee in 2011. She is now working toward an MFA in poetry at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where she also teaches. Her poems have appeared in Poetry Miscellany, the Sequoya Review, Industrial Lunch, and a chapbook (#7) by The Lifeboat, out of Belfast, NI.