ANOTHER JENNIFER POEM

Suspended thirty-eight thousand feet in recycled

air, somewhere south of Greenland's frozen tips,

halfway between old world and the new,

but feeling every moment that much closer

to the America four jumbo jets thrust us towards

courtesy of the high school trip

to Austria or Switzerland, maybe both,

that has trapped me in this adolescent sea

of squeals and flying objects, eight hours of giggly

teenagers facing backwards in their seats

engaged in multiple and variegated mating rituals

fueled by too much European chocolate

and a bittersweet need to chronicle this,

their final day together.  Meanwhile,

the same Jennifer Aniston love comedy

plays across screens attached to the seat backs

surrounding us—two dozen miniaturized floating

images of Jennifer's bouncing hair and breasts,

tanned legs running through a deathless California summer,

fleeing the dim-witted man-boy

the movie will insist she eventually marry.

My seatmate discourses loudly to her girlfriends

what constitutes a Hollywood hunk, erupts

abruptly into Lady Gaga song in mid-sentence,

while the placid green ocean below winks silently up at me

and I dream the dream of exchanging places

with Jennifer, even should it require me

to run away, anywhere,

wearing her four-inch stiletto heels.

 About Tony Magistrale:

Tony Magistrale was born in Buffalo, New York.  He received a B.A. from Allegheny College, M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh.  He is currently Professor and Chair of the English Department at the University of Vermont.  He has also taught at the Breadloaf Young Writers Conference and has served as a Fulbright Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University of Milan, Italy, and Visiting Professor at the University of Augsburg, Germany.  His book of poems, What She Says About Love, won the 2007 Bordighera Poetry Prize and was subsequently published in 2008 as a bilingual edition by the Bordighera Press and the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute at City University of New York.