Going to Tallahassee

The air simmers over the airstrip
hungering for the landing.
how it pucks and soughs, fried
as writhing dough.
I am going to Tallahassee with a five-foot tin tub
and a tale of sorrow unraveling behind me.
All around me young mothers are shepherding
their young girls
their thighs stammer at their burdens,
so much of flesh. So many stunned hours
when the TV murmurs like a tossed
sea. The pressed air in a convex haze
over the grounded planes,
and I feel the burden at my breastbone,
the ache of something falling into being,
a child’s pain in the mouth,
so many pressures of teeth coming to be,
so many wakeful hours, so many new layers of bone.