Rattapallax 29: Rick Moody

MH370

Wide awake amid dim aisle lights, in a window seat, throbbing with the possibilities of life in front of him in Europe,

a poem by

RICK MOODY

rattapallax 29

Wide awake amid dim aisle lights, in a window seat, throbbing with the possibilities of life in front of him in Europe,

nameless, fraudulently documented, he knew the stars

from Arabic and Latinate maps of an

underfunded schoolroom past,

he knew the stars in the southerly latitudes of that

planet and he knew that upon the overnight he would see a glimmering

west to east into the brute north:

oh canis major oh taurus oh eridanus oh cetis oh orion your shimmery belt oh perseus oh hydra emblem of the water below;

stars of that hemisphere sprawled out on a

carpet of ten dimensions;

he knew the carpet and so he knew when the plane turned.

Not a sound from the locked cabin in the fore,

not a word from the vanished attendants,

not a noise but the shuddering, at 37,000 feet, of aluminum alloy,

and then the northerly constellations otherwise,

and then the going up, as if into a backdrop, uniting with the gravitational anomalies, with all that antedates the nation states of our miserable planet,

an event horizon, and then: disappearance,

extinguished consciousnesses, statistically unlikely,

bodies there, and then not there,

unlikely, but not impossible, in a hologram, this mind,

at the event horizon . . .

He knew.

www.rattapallax.com Rattapallax is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.