This Clumsy Living

Peoria

90 Peoria has a river and dirty cabs. There’s no easy way to drive from Peoria to Kankakee. Don’t come to Peoria for the falafel. Come for the shapely heads of Peorians. I talk to Carolyn who is worried about her mother. Carolyn’s mother is 80 and waiting in O’Hare for Carolyn. Carolyn’s wearing a black t-shirt with a red pineapple in the middle. A red pineapple with green ears and a blue mouth. Imagination still exists. The sky still exists though we are not in it. I watch Carolyn’s bags while she pees and she watches mine. We sit at tables that make the Peoria airport feel like a diner. I’d like to have smoked a cigarette with Hopper. No one tells us why we’re not flying. The airline seems to have one employee, a black man with Carl in cursive on his workshirt. He has a dash of silver hair, it is snowing in his thoughts. He works the computer up front and goes out to help planes coming in, to wave the orange sticks that say we are happy to have you. Carolyn’s flying to Chicago to meet her mother to fly to a wedding in Dallas. I would fly to New York to be honked at. As Carolyn says her mother gets disoriented, her eyes butterfly over the shapes of the room without comfort. There’s a TV thirty I guess feet away. An orange circle spins counterclockwise on a map, the same orange as Carl’s sticks. I went to college, I know hurricanes aren’t really orange, I know Wittgenstein something something. This one’s named Katrina. The names of hurricanes shouldn’t be so pretty you want to kiss them. 91 People look at the TV but not really over their papers. All disasters are local. The midwest hurricane season is brief, it’s dry and unblustery in the terminal. Except in Carolyn’s face, where there’s a storm as yet unnamed, storm of has my mother picked up a stranger’s baby, is my mother leaning against a pillar in Concourse E, calling my name. When Carl lifts the microphone, Carolyn stares at his mouth, I think of them as a couple, one needing to fly, one capable of wings. The circle spins over and over on TV, the hole in the middle’s called an eye, New Orleans is about to be attacked by a Cyclops. Carl says go go go. Carolyn’s face drops the stone it’s been holding. I say goodbye and she says goodbye. Soon a woman will stand before us and talk about safety. I’ll look down on Peoria getting smaller and wave at the Earth that will be heavier when I return. ...