A Truth About Clouds
John Dorroh
I’m welded into an aluminum hull with a sweet kiss
of tungsten, some other metal, perhaps titanium, not sure.
I’m sanctioned & certified, branded & bribed, proselytized & conjugated
in the blood of some damn lamb.
I am like a cloud, as a matter of fact,
heavy shawls of sinister & gray wall clouds, flying through clouds —
cottony, inviting, mesmerizing — then the bump & grind,
the turbulence shaking the belly of the plane, the kid
behind me
counting the swimming pools: one swimming pool,
two swimming pools. Three, four, five, and then he loudly announces
These people are rich! I had waited expectedly for his assessment,
a generalization, this jump from observation into recognizing class distinction,
this cataloguing of content in celestial accumulations of clouds: water droplets, dust particles,
filaments of straw from a chickadee nest, slivers of tan Band-aids, canary dust, spores & molds
so large that they can be seen with the naked eye.
I swear I read this on the Internet, so it must be
true: Clouds also contain ganja & cobra skin, blackberry mold & cat dander, microscopic pieces
of anvils, so heavy. Almost enough to kill you.
of tungsten, some other metal, perhaps titanium, not sure.
I’m sanctioned & certified, branded & bribed, proselytized & conjugated
in the blood of some damn lamb.
I am like a cloud, as a matter of fact,
heavy shawls of sinister & gray wall clouds, flying through clouds —
cottony, inviting, mesmerizing — then the bump & grind,
the turbulence shaking the belly of the plane, the kid
behind me
counting the swimming pools: one swimming pool,
two swimming pools. Three, four, five, and then he loudly announces
These people are rich! I had waited expectedly for his assessment,
a generalization, this jump from observation into recognizing class distinction,
this cataloguing of content in celestial accumulations of clouds: water droplets, dust particles,
filaments of straw from a chickadee nest, slivers of tan Band-aids, canary dust, spores & molds
so large that they can be seen with the naked eye.
I swear I read this on the Internet, so it must be
true: Clouds also contain ganja & cobra skin, blackberry mold & cat dander, microscopic pieces
of anvils, so heavy. Almost enough to kill you.
John Dorroh travels as often as possible. He inevitably ends up in other peoples’ kitchens, exchanging culinary tidbits and telling tall tales. Once he baked bread with Austrian monks and drank a healthy portion of their beer. Six of his poems were nominated for Best of the Net. Others have appeared in over a hundred journals, including Feral, North of Oxford, River Heron, Wisconsin Review, Kissing Dynamite, and El Portal. He had two chapbooks published in 2022. He lives in rural Illinois, near St. Louis.