Wake Turbulence
After leaving my old life
I return often
the way a dried
chickpea
soaked overnight
comes back
to its first form,
not the same as
floating all along
in the aluminum
of origins.
My brain has
suffered a wake
turbulence
as when a plane
banks to the left
due to another
plane above.
Each time I feel
the fact of me
die out I read
my children
like a stranger’s
punctuation
beckoning me
for directions.
Some days
I will not eat
unless it’s tart
au nothing
longing for
not quite love
again, but the lip
of the jar of love
is just as nice.
My heart says
Bad bad bad
flicking two
packs of sugar
against a cup
and my spine
remains my favorite
part of me because
I cannot see it.
In the conference
moonlight, several
workshops of stars
neglect their work,
backbiting Earth
in the most beautiful
voices. Upon landing
my wish is to be
done returning
like a Cycladic
figure in a tomb
leaning faceless
but absolutely femme
against what was.
The dead so dead
the statue flaunts
her future. She never
left. I left yes yes
and in the end
I will still be praying
not to die
when and if I do.
Copyright © 2026 by Elizabeth Metzger. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on August 5, 2026, by the Academy of American Poets.
“Flying back from New York to Los Angeles, out of nowhere the plane tilted, and the pilot announced a ‘wake turbulence.’ I had been perseverating on life choices, oscillating between selves, cities, possible futures, when I was interrupted by [an] immediate sense of danger caused by a plane. Change is never a choice. All possibilities collided instantly. The trivia and traffic of passing thoughts ganged up in the space left by my vaster indecisions. What I feared facing I suddenly faced as a near-death experience. Aren’t we all near death and in denial every moment?”
—Elizabeth Metzger
Elizabeth Metzger
