Poet Spotlight: Exploring Tracey Knapp's 'Layover'

Part 2 of 4: Finding the existential crisis at the airport in Knapp's "Layover" (Mouth, 2015)

LAYOVER

Outside, they're salting the tarmac
while I pull tinsel from my hairbrush
in the restroom and inspect my teeth
with the tinsel. A flush crescendos
in the background. Another woman
steps up to the mirror in the anti-bacterial air.

It's another year.

A tiny spider drops from the ceiling
on its invisible line, pausing midair before
it continues to descend, no big rush
for the imminent water spout, the sweet wet
fast track to the afterlife. Everyone pauses
here, gathers at a gate and waits
to be lifted, luggage, miniature dachshunds and all,
guitar cases shifting in takeoff upwards and through
the cumulonimbus mass that straddles
the greater metropolitan area of Minneapolis.

The lights of the terminal ignore the fact of 9:30 p.m.
and sparrows circle the inside ceiling of the food court
like the way airplanes must skim
the inner atmosphere. I wonder if I will ever fly
past it, beyond the window seat
of a slightly curved horizon. They have
airplanes that can do that now, but I don't know
what I would learn about my life by being so far away
from where I live it. Maybe not knowing
is enough of a reason to do it: there,
an entire weather system, there, the Great Salt Lake,

Look, that is our planet and beyond it, a vast black
expanse of nothing, of night.

Two hours delayed, and I've already
eaten all my peanuts. There are still no seats
at the gate. A group of people fill
the airport bar, learning into their drinks
like horses to a pond, their eyes soft and blank.
At any moment least two men will tumble
to the ground, a gram on the widescreen that is sure
to end badly for someone. The server is nowhere. 
I just wanted the Cobb salad, a mindless trip.
I wanted to start the year off right.

---

“Existential Layover,” by T.McCarthy

Editor's Note

Layover (Knapp, 42 Miles Press) captures those suspended moments when time stretches and ordinary observations take on existential weight in the liminal space of an airport terminal. The poem's close takes us from terminal to atmosphere to planet and beyond, mirroring how our thoughts can travel vast distances while our bodies remain temporarily stranded.

• More about this work: https://blogs.bu.edu/crwr/2014/09/26/tracey-knapp-wins-42-miles-press-poetry-award/

Introducing Tracey Knapp

I am so grateful to Tracey & 42 Miles Press for allowing me to re-share her poetry from “Mouth.”

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  tracey knapp

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• WWW - https://www.traceyknapp.com/