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Taking Flight
by Audrey McDonnell
She is returning from her brother’s funeral in her home state of Indiana. She is twenty, he is seven. Was. The plane heads west to Arizona, where she attends college. As she looks out the window, she sees the large irrigation circles spread across the farmland of middle America and suddenly she understands the beauty of the flying; the air and the light.
Birds fascinated him. She had given him a bird book for his fifth birthday along with a feeder they had hung outside his bedroom window. He could sit for hours, watching the silent flutter of wings, the quick powerful beaks breaking open seeds. Chickadees, goldfinches, grosbeaks, a wary female cardinal. He loved the fat miserly blue jays that stuffed themselves with sunflower seeds, then flew to nearby cedars to feast. In the afternoon, when he was supposed to be napping, he would pull his rocking chair up to the window and watch.
Remembering this, she smiles. It is a smile of lonely longing for a boy she will never see again. She left school suddenly, in the middle of the night, her roommate waking abruptly, answering the pleading ring of the telephone. After the phone call, there was only an empty, unquestioning suitcase.
Once, when he was younger, they had found a dead bluebird in their backyard. It had flown into the window and broken its neck. She found him outside, holding open the wing, counting the feathers: ten primaries, ten secondaries. He had clasped the weightless bird in his hands, stroking its rusty breast, whispering secrets into its invisible ear.
Her parents told her he had tried to fly from the house roof. It was a gray, sunless day and he wanted to fly the 1200 miles to see her in Arizona: a surprise visit. Phone calls weren’t enough. They went to buy groceries, leaving him in his room, watching the birds. As the car pulled out of the drive, he’d climbed out his bedroom window, onto the roof.
She can imagine him falling, silently, arms spread like featherless wings. Then he is lying still on the pavement. His muscles twitch, as if relaxing into sleep; his body still dreaming of flight.
Over Sun City, she tries to count the backyard pools. They are each a different shade of blue; blue winged teal, blue jay, bluebird. Then there’s Phoenix, in the foothills of the White Tanks. The plane circles again and again, waiting for its turn to land.
Untitled
by Louisa Flynn Goodlett
I asked you
to write down your phone
number and all I got was
this damn napkin
It’s two am and the sky is
the color of a corpse that died
of eating too many apples
in the rain.
I wish you would just
leave me alone
and go write
your own memoir
and let me just get on
with writing mine.
You keep talking about eternity
and doing nothing about it.
Lifestyle Celebration
by Evie Farmer
Brown necks celebrate
hemp and swear
Laced blouses conceal
braless breasts
Long hair caresses
down to waists
Hips capture drumbeats
in bright skirts
Bare feet pound patterns
into earth
Dancers touch hot hands
holding life
Genesis
by Louisa Flynn Goodlett
My mother dressed like a star on Sundays
And she would sing along with the songs blasting from the radio
Just as soulfully as she sang in church
To the hymns at choir practice
Her suede voice echoing off the stained glass
Like water inside of our best china tea cups.
In her best yellow dress
The one with tiny red ladies slippers
Scattered across it in a haphazard pattern,
She looked like a willow
Whispering to the lilies.
There was talk in my Sunday school class
That my mother was an angel and I never protested
Because I loved to see the change
That came over the face of the bullies
When she smiled at them
Sweetly, like the marble statue of a saint in some imposing catacombs
Watching over the bodies of those who politely passed away.
Some days I could see those granite halls behind her eyes
I knew that she was just wandering somewhere around the next turn
And that I had to find her
Before she became more hopelessly lost down there.
I thought that one day soon I might stumble upon her
Staring out at me from the stained glass window,
Because she told me as a child
That she would like to be made of glass
And have the sun shine through her skin.
She would watch the miserable people passing by
Wondering at the beautiful color of her dress
Later they would thumb through their bibles trying to find her
Under “Saint in the yellow sun dress.”
Trees in the City
by Evie Farmer
Trees in the city
are the last reminder
of the way things were
before cement
poured itself down
at the altar of industry
paving a path
between our toes and the ground
Arie Koelewyn
The Paper Airplane Press
East Lansing, MI