Sgt. Graham, fresh from Iraq,
takes the adjacent seat
on the CRJ to JAX,
headphones wrapping his ears
with hip-hop. He mumbles
something, “... my man?”
I stash Odysseia in a pocket
where safety cartoons reach
for air masks.
He is twenty, pimpled,
dopey around the eyes, something
a military druggist gave him.
“He cut me loose at seventeen,”
Graham says, pantomiming his father
signing the waiver. The flight attendant
notes the exits. A recording
says the seats double as floatation devices.
The first thing, he says,
will be to roll a joint:
isolate the stems, grind the bud
with a mortar and pestle,
sprinkle in tobacco, wrap
the whole operation twice in zebra-striped
papers, and waft
the skunk to the deathless gods.
He’ll reach, then, for his Penelope,
who looked thinner in a Skype window.