print previewback PATRICIA COLLEEN MURPHY
Jet Lag
I was driving to drop off a check for deposit at my bank.
I had just had the perfect idea for a poem.
I remember the feeling of getting the idea.
It felt like paying off a debt.
It might have been about the irony of touring the Sagrada Família
one day, then dropping off a check at my bank the next.
Hmm. That doesn’t really sound like the idea.
Maybe it was about how all of Gaudí’s
buildings reminded me of my dead mother.
When I got to my bank I asked the teller,
What happened to gas prices?
She answered, They went down and then they went up.
I asked her, How much should I pay?
She answered, I filled up at the QT for $2.59.
And I didn’t tell her this because
she would have thought I was a nutcase.
But when she told me that I felt like she loved me.
I got back in my car and I went to the QT.
And while I pumped the gas I closed my eyes.
I thought about eating squid with white beans in the Boqueria.
I thought about buying beads in the Barri Gòtic.
I thought about how if Dalí lived my life,
he might have painted my dead mother
as a Slurpee, a corn dog, an SUV.
And Picasso’s Weeping Woman?
My dead mother, in a hat, pumping gas. 