1.

Ditching

Lately it appears the water
has been waiting for us to keep trying

to make it across. The rivers
and trenches glossed with light

know we are so relentless as to plan
for catastrophe, layering backup

upon reserve. A pilot could suffer
an aneurysm mid-flight and pass

quietly without panic in the cabin,
his crew gathering themselves to

drape him across the floor. A flock
of geese might cascade into our engines

and still the plane will float its way
downstream towards the Battery.

2.

Muse

Nightfall: pirate boy steps off the pier &
into the thick flashes of the newsmen

not at all like the others who hang their
coats from their foreheads or hood their faces

before hearings. He is smiling broadly
upon first meeting a mustered crowd lit

scattershot by the gaffers & grip crews.
Better to be here on this continent

of oaths & anthems & spit than a body
washed ashore, pockets stuffed with ransom?

is what they want to ask him as one, fit
voice—better alive, mocked by frogmen & our

sharpshooters than tagged & shelved in the holds
of a frigate moored off the coast of home?

Come see R.A. Villanueva along with poets April Heck, Natalie Diaz, and Ocean Vuong read at the AAWW this Thursday, November 21 at 7pm. Read April Heck’s poem “9/11/11,” published in The Margins.