Fiumicino
Joshua Jones The heads lined up down either side of the aisle⸺some wreathed with thinning hair, some resting on impatient hands, and some bobbing excitedly in conversation⸺ aren’t listening to the flight attendants. Neither am I, “Mezzogiorno” on full blast. The bust of one mother dangles over her armrest as she wipes the drool off her little boy’s cheek; her cone earrings hug her neck like the ones we saw on Agrippina, returned to her glass case after years in a dentist’s closet looking none too amused, still sour about her son. But we hardly saw that manic artist’s likeness anywhere, most of them picked away into Domitian’s, Apollo’s, or any number of petty local heroes’ whose name never outlived their borrowed face. The burly attendant catches my eye, scowls, and pretends to tear my ears off. |
Joshua Jones, originally from the Shenandoah Valley, is a third year candidate for the MFA in creative writing at UMass Boston. He has poems published in or forthcoming from Fourteen Hills, Coldnoon: Travel Poetics, and The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review among others. He lives in Dorchester with his wonderfully nerdy wife Lesleigh and their miniature dachshund Guinivere.
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