Expected Delays
The food court is a desert, undergoing renovations, and the fast-food burger chain has run out of Happy Meals. Instead, they are selling Tragedy Meals. The French fries are soggy, despite their coating of abrasive salt, the kind they use to melt ice on the sidewalk. The sandwich is a bun, inside a bun, inside another bun, slathered in mayonnaise of dubious provenance. None of the water fountains are working, the planes are grounded, lost in a storm of dust, and the flights have been delayed for months. Women braid each other's hair. Men braid each other's beards. The smell of the bathrooms is its own forbiddance, nearly a solid wall. The travelers form a circle and begin a rotating dance like the hora, circles within circles, tendrils breaking off toward the gates, where they sleep, so they will always be ready to depart. Meanwhile, a child is dowsing for water with a pair of disposable wooden chopsticks.
Ori Fienberg is the author of Old Habits, New Markets (elsewhere press, 2021). His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in venues including the Cincinnati Review, the Dallas Review, Dusie, Obliterat, Pank, Sixth Finch, and Subtropics. Ori teaches poetry writing for Northeastern University. Read more at orifienberg.com and follow @ArtfulHerring for poetry and political tweets.
