The screen is mounted twelve feet up and faces forty gates,
The sound is off but the captions scroll the fates
Of markets and of candidates and weather in a state
I’m not departing to, at a frequency and rate
That suggests the content team believes in volume as virtue,
The captions have three typos per screen and the inertue
Of the chyron says BREAKING which has meant since 2004
Something happened somewhere and we’re going to say it more.
It’s airport television, it’s the gate-side blare,
It’s airport television and it’s everywhere,
From the gate to the restaurant to the boarding lounge,
The same channel follows you wherever you would scrounge
For a moment of not-watching, but the screens outnumber
The walls, and the sound at the restaurant is the lumber
Of cable news at sixty-eight percent of volume,
Airport television and the traveler’s colosseum.
The man across the gate is watching something on his phone
With the full audio playing, which is his alone
In his own mind but in the gate’s acoustic space
It’s a committee of one sharing the soundtrack of the chase
Scene from whatever procedural he’s in the middle of,
The gate attendant has the intercom above
In reserve if she needs it and she hasn’t needed it,
The airport television and the audio and it.
The delayed flight information runs beneath the news,
The flight to Denver’s boarding and I’ve got twenty minutes to lose,
The flight to Dallas is delayed an hour and seven,
The man who’s going to Dallas just checked the flight and the leaven
Of bad news is visible in his posture and his exhale,
He ordered a twelve-dollar beer and watched the cable trail
Of BREAKING news about something he cannot affect,
Airport television and the passenger project.