J.D. Isip: What Used to be McCarran Airport, Las Vegas

J.D. Isip
WHAT USED TO BE MCCARRAN AIRPORT, LAS VEGAS

The Spring Mountains out in the distance, if you’re lucky
you’ll catch a sunset, the diminished edifices of glistening
cassinos refracting a little of the glory in their windows
where, once, at what was once The Monte Carlo, we woke,
ordered breakfast after 5 PM, Belgian waffles, strawberries,
crumpled sheets, mounds of whip cream in silver trays,
our pillows piled into a mountain out of the way, grasping
for small talk, you asked me about my Air Force days, sun
almost gone, just a thin red line over the peaks, if I’d ever
slept with another airman, try these strawberries, so sweet,
it wasn’t as titillating as you’d expected, you kissed my neck
before I finished the story about a friend, my best friend
then, after a year sitting in my dorm room, whiskey sours,
women he’d loved in Ohio, women he’d liked in between,
driving him to the airport, he looked out at the mountains,
said he hated them, they felt like walls he couldn’t climb.

J.D. Isip’s full-length poetry collections include Kissing the Wound (Moon Tide Press, 2023) and Pocketing Feathers (Sadie Girl Press, 2015). His third collection, tentatively titled Reluctant Prophets, will be released by Moon Tide Press in early 2025. J.D. lives in Texas with his dogs, Ivy and Bucky.