Seretta Martin
Mortal Things
City of poorly-loved chairs, bedroom slippers,
frying pans, I’m rushing back to you
—Charles Simic, “Things Need Me”
A plane explodes in mid-air, colors dive like kites
plunging into a sunflower field,
cell phones drop from the summer sky,
a cacophony of ringtones like mockingbirds —
frantic callers ring on and on trying to reach their fallen
strewn among yellow flowerheads —
scattered beside a red high heel
a baseball cap,
a teething ring,
cracked laptops hold unanswered emails
Facebook shows the passenger’s profiles
as if nothing has happened.
A gang of rebels, like raptors, raid the scene, hoard passports,
credit cards and seize all the black body bags
families will want returned
a wallet sprawls open —
a wedding couple
stares up at the clouds.
“‘Mortal Things’ reminds us that we live in a world of things and those things have little use or meaning without us, yet they remain important to our loved ones. In the last line of Charles Simic’s poem, ‘Things Need Me’ he writes, ‘Each one with a story to tell.’ In our violent world, a day can change instantly from pleasure to tragedy. The shock—the loss—the grief is surreal. How ironic it is to see colors dive like kites in the distance and learn that they are actually bodies falling. Our things have a life of their own and often outlive us. A cell phone rings after the owner is dead. Perhaps it is a relative who is trying to reach a passenger after hearing of the plane exploding. A laptop on the ground still shows the person alive on social media, and a personal effect such as a shoe or a pacifier becomes a useless object without the person. It’s shocking to think that after a disaster, dead bodies become another ‘thing’ in this material world. This poem comes from a news story that showed people who weren’t investigators, in a field collecting black body bags, and I wondered why. Did they think they were a useful commodity? Certainly, if they were poor or scavengers, they might be glad to have many of the ‘things’ that fell from the plane. Yet, as Simic reminded us, each thing has a story, and this includes the wedding couple’s photo showing their hopeful new beginning. The shape of the poem on the page is meant to echo the falling.—Seretta Martin
Seretta Martin, poet, artist and managing editor of San Diego Poetry Annual, is a finalist in the Philip Levine Award, Washington Prize and Atlantic Review. Over twenty years she has been teaching poetry. An award-winning poet, her work has been anthologized here and abroad. Holographic Reality: Poems of an Eclectic Life is her most recent book.
She can be reached at serettamartin@yahoo.com.