Writing Samples

Poetry by Jon Raasch


Vol de Nuit (Night Flight)

Strobe sounds seconds.
	Rhythmically, light overwhelms the wing.
and fades:
a faint outline of ordered seats
and vast blue tangerine.

clouds break, manifest
that awesome grid of oranges,
window filling, condensing the horizon.

The thin plaid widens,
	a city berths.

And, amongst musty towers,
	I imagine its foundations:
	bolts, gears, gas jets,
a vast network of interlocking metal,
radiation, neon hooks, 
buckets on conveyor belts.
mice and rats and muddy rivers surrounded by concrete
 and cars they still can't make silent

But alas, 
my dreams of filth produce dreams of longing 
for idyllic suburbs,
with orb lights spaced precisely,
	wreath adorned,
and forming a runway.
I'm ready to take off
but there's no sound out here,
one turn from the main drag
	to total darkness.

Black paranoia 
and I awake on the ground, staring at towers:
O! perfect obelisks of electronics 
and carefully molded plastic,
how city lights mother me!

2003