Airport Coffee Anna Oken (poetry

Airport Coffee

By Anna Oken

The airport tastes of plastic wrap

On artificial sandwiches; it smells

Of cheap coffee (and notice: airport coffee

Boasts an aftertaste found

Nowhere else on Earth.)

It makes the hairs stand stiff on end: the

Serious babies, crying men,

The very old on motorized

Carts, being shipped very slowly, cleaving crowds

Apart; the floor here is eternally

Sticky, the bathrooms doomed always

To run out of soap; your shoes cursed to walk

Crushed at the back of heel, from hurriedly jamming them

Back on your toes; the wheels of your bag, cursed to

Squeak; you run ruled by numbers on

Enormous screens, condemned for always to

Minute lettering.

Yet here only

You sleep easy.

The seats here are utterly

Cast off by God, being the

Hardest things that can

Hold sleep so long; the kids here

Run faster than any alive, the parents sweat more

Than good Joan as she died; no carpets are more

Definitively cursed, to be cleaned so often yet

Hold so much dirt; no air is as stale, nor

Filled with as much breath; nowhere do your

Legs beg so frankly for death;

In no other place can you listen so hard, yet

Find your ears completely deaf; and fight

Bravely for window seats, as Prometheus

Fighting for men.

Yet here only You find good rest.

Nowhere, as the port, is such a

Battle-ground, where all bonds of love

Face their test before crowds: matrimony

Strained as in no other world, and the friendship

Of siblings, forever unfurled, by one great

Betrayal, a scandalous cheat, as Betsy cries out:

Tom took my window seat! And all hearts nearby share a

Collective beat, as young hearts boil over in

Treacherous heat, and Tom rallies near

All the gumption of God, as he cries out, in

Socratic defense: Did not!

The food in this special world surely costs more

Than all noted depressions, and every world war; either

Pay your next rent, or buy that stale croissant: you stand

There for ten minutes, then the thing is bought.

No place has been so surely doomed, for nowhere else

Is so much lost; your bag, your kid, your favorite sock

Float somewhere in this flying dock, this landmark

Kin to Plymouth Rock, where mostly tourists

Disembark, full of strange meals and on

Wrong clocks. Yet here you have

Most often walked.

The first time is wondrous! You enter this world

As a fetus newly birthed! Upon your entry to this place, your growing-old

Neatly reversed! The carpet, so grey! you said, tears in your eyes; and the lines,

So artistic! Such long compromise!

And the walls, you continued, bursting with surprise,

A polychromatic canvas of beiges and whites!

Now, a veteran, you drag your battered bag,

And labor to prop up your eyes; noting only that all airports

Become the same, their hundredth time.

Yet here you live Most of your life.

The ground, here, groans under so many

New feet; for nothing stays long, not a single thing!

Pardon Me, I see I misspoke, for one thing stays: the tired groan,

And two things! Stickiness remains!

The eyes, the floor, the shoes, the

Face; in morning, night, through time, through space; no one

Living can say quite why the place turns all things

Sticky grey, except for a newfound theory

That it does so to make them stay.

Yet here you’ve been

On many days.

Nowhere else in life are the living so close

To entering so easily to the realm of ghosts; their faces turn grey, eyes

Long in stark light; their legs bend under

The weight of carried life; their luggage follows, squeaking

Loyally on; they forget the time, place, the night, and the dawn;

Truthfully, to be ghosts would be no leap at all; not here, where they float

In a befuddled pall, coming from a world that sends them

Distant calls, and wandering lost in

Innumerable halls.

Yet here only You have belonged.

The water here does not taste like

Any water you’ve been used to; which begs the question, how does water

Taste in such an orphaned state? When no one’s drunk it

Long enough to become friendly with

The taste? The employees here have the patience of God, for even a saint

Could not stay here so long; people shaking fingers,

My ride is delayed! And saints keeping on

An acceptable face. Yet here only

You feel in place.

You find a corner with relative silence, and sink your weight

Upon the floor; you slide your bag between your feet, (one

Foot now existing sans-sock); you hold

Cheap coffee like an arm, the chosen god of

Accursed ports: For the grains of the carpet, here,

Send vacuum cleaners straight to court; drive bored children

Straight out their minds; send stressed mothers

To life support.

Here the endurance of man

Is tested for all worth;

And coffee here, my friend, tastes like

No other drink on Earth.

Anna Oken grew up traveling constantly as a third culture kid. She lived in several different countries, primarily in Hungary.