“Passenger Deck” by Eric Kocher

October 17, 2024Posted by

Eric Kocher

PASSENGER DECK

Now we are on the ferry we flew to drive to,
It’s enormous engines vibrating
 
Every molecule, spreading out,
A family of ducks getting out of the way.
 
My wife claims there are fish jumping,
But every time I look up
 
They are gone, or she is lying.
I have become suspicious of my pursuit
 
Of remoteness, of seeking out places far away
And difficult to get to,
 
Places with fewer people, more trees.
I am suspicious
 
Because I know it’s at least somewhat
Insincere, that I very deeply need other people
 
Around me to feel safe, to feel important,
That part of my departure is the performance
 
Of departure, the making of the image of one.
This departure is certainly
 
Not about being alone.
My wife and I are here as a way of being
 
Even more together than we normally are,
Or maybe being together
 
In a way that we used to be all the time
Before our daughter was born.
 
Her birth made us closer, for sure,
It made our little story seem
 
Impossibly big and important,
Like we were conducting the soundtrack
 
To our daughter’s grand entrance
To being with other people, to being with herself.
 
But it also made certain parts of ourselves
And each other seem far away,
 
Like one of those distant places
I am always interested in going.
 
I tell my wife that, of all the places
On the planet, the place I want most to be
 
Is the North Pole, that I feel the Arctic calling me
As if from inside of a dream.
 
A smaller boat passes by and I’m surprised
When we are unmoved
 
By its little wake, that the waves,
Regardless of their size,
 
Should rock us, however gently.
But now we are on this gigantic boat
 
Looking for those people we used to be,
Trying to remember them without erasing
 
Each other, without erasing
The people that they have become
 
And all the ways they are growing still.
We also came here looking for whales,
 
I should add, that we bought tickets from people
Who promised we would see them.
 
And now that we are out here looking
For ourselves among them,
 
I have no idea why. Or, maybe,
I’m worried what might happen if they see me.
 

—from Sky Mall
2024 Rattle Chapbook Prize Winner

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Eric Kocher: “A little over ten years ago, my friend Mark made a joke. He said that I should try to be the first person to publish a poem in Sky Mall Magazine. There was something about shopping for the most inane, kitschy stuff on the planet while flying 30,000 feet above it, just to avoid a moment of boredom, that seemed to be the antithesis of poetry. The words “Sky Mall” got stuck in my head—lodged there. This is almost always how poems happen for me. Language itself seems to be in the way just long enough to build tension before it can open into a space that pulls me forward. These poems finally arrived while I was traveling, first alone, and then the following year with my wife, as a new parent in that hazy dream of the post-pandemic. Writing them felt like going on a shopping spree, of sorts, so I tried to let myself say yes to everything.”

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