The Iron Door
James Miller
last day in berlin, wander through
only one cemetery, half-hour looking
for hegel’s stone. struggle with headlines on the u-bahn:
divers find bloated body, surge of suicides,
songbirds dwindle to extinction. over midnight mid atlantic,
read fourteen chapters of thomas mann,
whose family built a grand provincial house to die in.
pages sweet with trace of locust juice,
crumbled wings of ufa, fassbinder, scorched dietrich dresses.
banking over texas, houston time, refinery
haze crowds the drought distance. u.s. passport
shares sweat in pocket with smeared phone.
landing soon. coil earbuds, stuff damo suzuki soundtracks,
ipod life low as drag of metal on meat,
forked groove of ground chuck and chorizo choked
in adobo. pulled out by security at border control,
suspect first and last name, so sent through the iron door.
passport squats in bland unmarked folder. not one
question asked. their keyboards twittering. ten minutes
with folded hands, and out again. passage
granted. can’t remember fleshed detail. piles
of luggage. three-dozen blank, stateless faces,
waiting with me for judgment. there is no seeing,
no seeing there.
Writer’s Notebook
Every time I travel, my name gets flagged by airport security, and I have to go through the "Iron Door” into stateless limbo. I've personally never had any problems otherwise: the staff run obscure passport checks, and in a few minutes I'm free. But there are many other people waiting in that room, and I wanted to write a poem about my experience of (not) seeing them.
The poem describes my most recent return to the US—coming back from a trip to Europe a couple of years ago, before the pandemic. I was reading Thomas Mann and thinking about Hegel, Fassbinder, Damo Suzuki from the German group Can. I was aware that, once we landed, I would be separated from my wife… for a short time.
But when you go through the Iron Door, all thoughts stop.
about the writer
James Miller won the Connecticut Poetry Award in 2020. Recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Typehouse, Rabid Oak, North Dakota Quarterly, Scoundrel Time, 8 Poems, Phoebe, Yemassee, Mantis, Concho River Review, Blue River Review, Cleaver, Rathalla Review and elsewhere. Follow on Twitter @AndrewM1621.