Reflections on the Road

An update and a hello from my writing office.

Darklings,

Is it weird to say I miss you? I do.

My body is still resting from my wild motorcycle adventure, including a minor injury to my rotator cuff from, if you can believe it, putting my motorcycle jacket and backpack on each time I got onto the bike. Who knew that was even possible? (Not me, apparently.) Bike jackets are made out of heavy leather and Kevlar; they are tight and stiff by design, including inflexible back and elbow plates. I wasn’t mindful when taking the rigid jacket on and off over the course of the tour or of the way I was constantly jamming my arms awkwardly through my backpack’s tightened straps every time we geared up to ride. If you had given me a million guesses as to how I would hurt myself on a motorcycle poetry tour, none of them would include “jacket-and-backpack-induced shoulder injury.” Part of healing the injury is just to rest the pulled muscle, so for the next few weeks, what I would normally write out in an essay will come in the form of a video.

So here’s a first hello from me reflecting on the last several weeks via video and sharing with you the story of a very special handcrafted chapbook made for me for the Pretend It’s A Boat tour, by my friend Bill at Bottle of Smoke Press. The book was used to read on tour and holds new, never-before-published poems—one of which I’ve read for you today.

Approach
by Amber Tamblyn

From the airplane window heading home, I look down
at the boiling rooftops of Brooklyn flickering 
under a cussing sun, each a pin’s head
poking out from a cushion of millions. 
Honey I’m home I whisper to my dog 
down there somewhere dreaming, legs twitching
as she chases her youth.
 
Captain, you can just drop me off here I announce 
to the mini vodka bottle on the tray in front of me, empty
as Putin’s dresser of love letters from his mother. 
Still got it I chuckle, my thumbs fumbling 
for the bottle’s last tango in coach.

As the last sip touches down between my ribs 
I imagine all the plane’s metal clanging to a dead halt 
in the middle of the sky, the emergency doors opening
as I gracefully repel ten thousand feet 
into my borough’s arms. 
 
In the distance, The Freedom Tour tombstones 
erect like a mass grave; Echoes of its previous shadows. 
From up here, I know what the heavens and my mind are capable of, 
the worst things imaginable; the Falling Man in 2001
plummeting down the side of the North Tower,
face first, his knees bent as if sitting in a chair
for a one hundred mile an hour meal with an angel 
before asking the concrete for the check.
 
There was no graceful pause or repel for him, 
no terminal's welcome at the end of his story, 
no honeys, no home. I could go on, go off 
the deep end of my own darkness 
at cruising altitude. 

Up here, I can think about death 
without being afraid of it. Up here, so close 
to the reward of God’s winning, 
Musk’s play toy, so close 
to that onyx unknown just beyond 
the big blue’s final curtain.
 
Have you ever looked up? 
When looking out the window of an airplane?
Way up, where the powder turns royal then curls into its curious ending.

There is no greater vertigo. 
No disorientation more humbling. 
No awe more holy. 
 
As the plane descends, black smoke smolders up 
in the shape of a damaged S from an apartment in Chinatown. 
The woman in the seat in front of me mutters something 
about 9/11 to her husband and takes a picture of the skyline.

We are both tourists of tragedy, two tailwinds soaring 
through someone else’s history.

Something crawls on the back of my neck— 
a memory,
a premonition. 
 
We thought when the towers fell
that would be the most suffering
we would ever feel. 

We did not know the years were coming
when we would feel it together again, 
only this time, 
alone.