Mag Gabbert
[At the gate I saw . . . ]
At the gate I saw a woman pulling a pink suitcase while her costumed kid rode it like a pony: her own one-person parade. Balloon in hand. Now our plane’s just cleared a shelf of clouds and the sky’s blue again, everything below a frothy cauldron of mist. Another picture of heaven. I’m about to try an exercise in which I see if I can taste a food just by thinking about it. Strawberry shortcake, salt and vinegar chips, rack of lamb. Simone Weil said, “There are people who have lived by and for nothing but sensations.” Weil starved herself to death. And yet, one biographer wrote that “she died of love.” I want hunger to help me notice weird, cosmic shit. Tell the gross from the devoted. Once, when I went to a chef’s tasting, the server brought out a certificate of authenticity with a print of the cow’s nose on it. Just like that, sometimes everything feels too close.
Mag Gabbert is the author of SEX DEPRESSION ANIMALS, which won the Charles B. Wheeler and Writers’ League of Texas Poetry Awards.