Near Miss
considers the relationship between close calls and the tenuous conditions of contemporary life. From actual cataclysms such as meteor collisions and volcanic eruptions to everyday failures and accidents, these inventive poems collide with the perpetual unease created by life’s unpredictability while contemplating mortality, fragility, gratitude and hopefulness.
... When the Emergency Broadcast
System proclaims this is only a test, you
leave the TV on because you’ve gotten
used to the sound. You keep waiting
for the heat to come on, for the regular
broadcast to resume, for a new sensation
to quicken inside you like the sight
of that fleet of ghost-planes lifted
from the desert, reanimated, hovering
over your house as if everything is fine.
— “Decommissioned Planes”