Sometimes Being Above the Clouds is Not a Metaphor
Like right now as our plane is circling
above a thunderstorm and a tall bro
(with a tattoo of Marilyn Monroe’s face on his bicep)
is elbowing my hip, and the retired middle manager
behind me is talking to a law student about
the problem of all of those people who don’t
even pay taxes: no skin in the game
he explains.
Let me tell you.
I much prefer the metaphoric experience.
Like that afternoon in Manhattan—
our home−when we walked across the park
after looking at Gego’s abstract wire drawings
and all the people in the park
started to resemble wire sculptures
except the rollerbladers
who grew to resemble birds
or like that evening
by the poetry conference bonfire
when I chat with two new friends
about the image of animal tracks
in translations of Tomas Tranströmer,
and listen to the sound of everyone cackling
at my exaggerated disappointment
that the fire-roasted marshmallow—
my first in 30 years—tastes more like ash
than like the nostalgic embodiment of childhood.
Oh by the way, did you notice that our laughter
sounded like the crashing of a wave?
Sadly now my head is not in the clouds,
my body is.
The overhead announces,
We are sorry, we will keep circling as long
as the fuel lasts,
and I look out the window and would like to tell you
that in the white bumps of the sky’s typical clouds I can see
the shape of the faces of everyone I have ever loved,
but I don’t see faces.
I just see clouds.
Today I am just a person, not a poet.
Today I look out the window and see clouds.
The Last Phone Booth in the World is Booking Appointments Now
If you make love in the phone booth,
the baby conceived there
will one day be good at poker.
If you play badminton in the phone booth,
the birdie will sing like a bird.
If you shave your arm pits in the phone booth,
the hair will grow back as mangrove leaves.
If you whisper a lullaby in the phone booth,
the toddler at the other end of the line
will wake up as an elderly moose.
If you accept my apology in the phone booth,
your heart will open a door in its left ventricle
and a ring-tailed lemur will pop out.
If you write a manifesto in the phone booth,
the letters of the text will rearrange
themselves into curses.
If you do your taxes in the phone booth,
your refund will refill the hole in your heart.
If you fall asleep in the phone booth,
you will dream of a tower made
of abandoned phone booths.
If you dig a deep enough hole in the floor
of the phone booth, you can hear the center
of the earth howl your name.
If you dial my number in the phone booth,
you will hear the whole ocean fill the receiver.
If you eat a whole chicken in the phone booth,
you will long to fly south for the winter.
If you admit to all of your feelings in the phone booth,
you will be able to control the rain.
Jaffe’s Fish Market, 1942
When you look at a photograph of Jaffe’s fish market,
do you see yourself as the woman in the floral dress
gazing at the camera, or the woman in the plain dress
handing a man money? Are these really the only two ways
of being a woman? Of being a Jew? Is this why my great
grandmother Esther used to call my grandmother mieskeit.
Esther thought beauty brought bad luck. Better to believe
you are ugly. Women in beautiful dresses end up spending
so long looking out the window of the fish market
that they forget to buy fish. Women should think
of themselves as ugly, so they have time to labor, to clean
and make soup, time to give the men money for fish.
But my grandmother, she didn’t want to think about buying
fish. She wanted to stay in school and to one day travel the world
like Pearl Buck, whose books she checked out of the library,
and who allowed her to feel she was trekking across China,
so that it didn’t bother her when her mom tried to taunt her
by saying the folds in her eyelids made her look Chinese.
Esther slung the words as an insult, but my grandma welcomed
them as a compliment. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be Chinese?
she thought, as she imagined herself like Pearl Buck, flying
across the Pacific, then gazing out the plane’s round window
at her Chinese doppelganger strolling the freshly paved runway
in a beautiful, floral dress.
Index to the Encyclopedia of Grief
Blue hallway
Box of lukewarm coffee
Cat hair on a black dress
Candle,
covered with dust from construction site out the window
forgot to light, first year
gift for missing altar
lit a week late, second year
with text in a language unreadable to griever
Cell phone photographs of physical photographs
Delivery pizza
Delivery roti
Delivery sushi
Delivery wine
Doorway, growing smaller
Getting lost
at the supermarket
in the apartment
on the subway
under the bed
Lilies, white and wilted and in a borrowed glass vase
Music,
more beautiful or less beautiful
played on a stranger’s piano
Pillow that smells like a pillow, A
Rain
Tears,
on Zoom
hitting a yellow scarf
missing (see also Joy)
Underwire bra digging into skin
Underworld, books about
Waiting
Waves
Joanna Fuhrman is an assistant teaching professor in creative wWriting at Rutgers University and the author of seven books of poetry, most recently Data Mind (Curbstone/Northwestern University Press, 2024). Joanna’s poems have appeared in Best American Poetry 2023 and 2025, The Pushcart Prize anthology, The Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, and The Slowdown podcast. She first published with Hanging Loose Press as a teenager and became a co-editor in 2022.
