Skip to main content

Heathrow

My poem Heathrow was written for the 'Dreams' issue of Ghost Girls Zine.

I enjoy themed calls for submissions, because it often prompts me to write something new.  In this case, I wrote about my recurring dream of running late for an international flight.  I am so often lost in an airport, or in tunnels between platforms at unfamiliar train stations.

Something I enjoy about poetry is the opportunity to write something completely bizarre, and to have others read it and laugh, saying "yes, it's just like that!"

Thanks to Ghost Girls for the inspiration.



Heathrow

It’s 10am. The plane is leaving at 11. The gate is past the airport juice bar.

 

It’s 4pm. The plane left at 11. You are at the juice bar on a beach in Jamaica.

 

It’s 11am. You are on the plane, with your pineapple-mango mocktail and your sleeping bag. It’s

going to be a long flight. You wish you hadn’t left your books on your hotel bed.

 

You are at the hotel, collecting your books, but now you might miss your flight because there are no taxis to take you back to the airport.

 

Why are you in a taxi in London when everyone knows the traffic is terrible? You should have caught the train. Now you’re going to miss your flight.

 

They don’t even call it the train in London, they call it the… subway? No, wait. That’s New York. What is it in London? Pretend you’re reading a British book and the protagonist is like “I’m going on the…?”

 

Underground. You are under the ground, in the sewers of London. The tunnels are dark and there is murky water sloshing at your feet. Now you will definitely miss your flight. At least you have your books with you. Wait, where are the books? Maybe you left them in New York, on the subway.

 

Why are you in a sewer? You need to get to the airport. The plane is leaving at 11. What time is it now?

 

You check your phone. It’s 72 o’clock. Stupid phone. Stupid Apple and their stupid planned obsolescence and stupid non-compatible operating systems.

 

What is 72 o’clock in British time? GMT plus… zero? Isn’t Greenwich literally in England? You are going to miss your flight for sure because there are no taxis in the sewer.

 

You keep walking through the sewer. There’s the juice bar and a clock.

 

It’s 10am.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Euphausia superba

Three of my poems were published in   Otoliths   journal, on 1 August 2022. Otoliths is  an  Australian online journal created by Queensland-based poet Mark Young. One thing that drew me to this journal was its name. Otoliths are small round bones in the ears of vertebrate animals (including humans). They sense gravity and movement, which is crucial for balance. As an undergraduate zoology student, I spent hours volunteering on a research project that involved removing the otoliths from small fish. The otoliths absorbed minerals from the water that the fish were drinking and living in, so by matching the mineral composition with the concentrations from different creeks and rivers, it was possible to see where the fish had migrated from. I don't think I ever found out what the research findings were, but I do remember that yanking out bits of bone from behind hundreds of fish-brains was horrifying and satisfying in equal parts. When it came time to choose my own resea...
Post a Comment
Read more

Light and Colour I

Anyone who has met me knows that I don't really have a haiku vibe.  I'm neither minimalist not serene, but in the interest of exploring different poetic forms, I wrote a few haiku for the 'Light and colour' issue of  Echidna Tracks journal last year, and had two published.   This is the first one.  The editors removed the word "where" , but I prefer the symmetry of the 5-7-5 format. When I read this now, over a year later, the word 'mourn' jumps out, but at the time, it was written with the intent of capturing a particular time and place.   Just over a decade ago, I was heartbroken after being dumped by someone who I'd been crazy about.  I was living with a friend in Brunswick, in Melbourne's inner-north.  The front of the house faced west, and in typical sharehouse style, we had an old couch on the verandah.  I loved that I could have the comfort of the couch combined with the warmth of the afternoon sun.   The relationship h...
Post a Comment
Read more