Fly Boy
Written May, 2024
I was carrying out my birthright
My god-given duty
To jump from high places
Yours was a second floor balcony
At the southdale mall
Mine was a window
It’s our legacy
Written on the backs of our genes
To fly
Do your knees still fill with fluid?
Mine do
I think I’m retired from flying now
And passing out in the snow/
And getting lost in the woods/
And crashing cars
I think I’ve had enough
“What’s in your pockets?”
“What’s in your purse?”
- they ask, before pinning us to the ground/
“A fuckin bomb”, you said
I just ran.
Because I’m sick of it.
I’m sick of being Fly Boy.
Butterfly Wine
Written September, 2023
Have some wine
For there isn’t any
A fastidious hare said in my right ear
His breath tickled as he spoke
Prickling my skin
A butterfly landed senseless on my shoulder
“Don’t talk to him” said the hare
“The words of Lepidoptera are but riddles and poems.”
I sipped the empty cup
Swallowed the nothing
Lifted back to bed by gnarled, angry roots
As soft wings rapped on my window
Have some wine, butterfly
For there isn’t any
Paper Cranes
Written July, 2023
for Andrew
The clock hands twitched
As a breeze blew in from the east side of town
Sleep had escaped, leaving dreams behind
Wrapped in peculiar paper birds
I hesitated to awaken fully
And grabbed another note square
Folded the wings and using a narrow pin
Pulled the tail and elongated the neck
This one was surprisingly strong, I thought
Smaller than the others, but oddly sturdier
Every pleat had purpose
I set him by my bedside, this most perfect little crane
The warm wind exhaled
And my avian army fluttered to the floor
All except this one who remained upright
Funny and unflappable he stayed perched on my table
Balanced on the tip of my finger,
I looked this paltry teal bird where his eyes would be
Kissed his beak and sent him back eastward
To share his novelty with another
Someone who needed him more than me
To be reassured and comforted
By the toughness
Of tiny things
Space Wolf
Written August, 2019
In my early twenties I lived in a place called Minot, North Dakota. Unique in its brand of beauty, the little city sits cradled in a river valley surrounded by rolling hills and ancient oaks. It’s the sort of beauty you wouldn’t really notice unless you were looking at it from above, up on the peaks of the north and south hills. The sort of beauty they use for the thousand piece jigsaw puzzles you find in old mom and pop drug stores.
Minot is always buzzing - a melting pot of passersby. Transients come from all over the country for the railroad, the Air Force base, the nearby oil, and the university. I too was a passerby. I never really belonged there because I was never really supposed to belong there. Most things in Minot are temporary. The ephemeral nature of this quaint little town is its own self-preservation. Everything is always changing, and therefore everything stays the same.
During my stay I studied classical cello at the university. I made occasional trips home to Fargo. Fargo is perhaps the exact opposite of Minot. People who live there stay for many years. New populace is encouraged to blend in and become part of the woodwork, so long as they can adhere to the customs and conventions of its resident dwellers. And though I was born there, and though my father grew up there, I never belonged there either. I kept my holidays brief. So, like the extraterrestrial I am, at the end of my visits I would climb back into my rusty saucer (Mercury Sable, 2000 - a steed among mokes!) and float back across the prairie. Back to another home that felt homeless.
They say the best route from Fargo to Minot is to take I-94 to Jamestown, and then US-52 W. If you take this route you can go through Carrington because they have a Pizza Ranch. I never typically took this way because I do not like old buffet pizza and I really think it’s worth the extra time to be able to stop in Bismarck, the state’s capitol city. My grandfather’s grave is there, across the street from a Space Aliens Grill and Bar. (Don’t worry, the uncanny accuracy is not lost on me.) Anyway, while passing through I always bought flowers at the grocery store and brought them to Grandpa. Then I’d get back in my rust bucket and travel north on 83.
Wilton, Washburn, Cole Harbor, Max. That is the order of the towns you pass between Bismarck and Minot. Notable sights include but are not limited to:
1. The sign in Wilton that says “Go Miners!”. It was probably made in the 80s. A weathered and true symbol of school spirit. I like that they’ve kept it as long as they have. People are always throwing things away before they’re broken. Good on you, Wilton.
2. Another sign, a road sign, that says “Point of Interest” overlooking a shallow bog, rife with mosquitos in the summer. The air around it stinks. Birds come here to die.
3. Fields of windmills - large stoic giants. I am never more connected to Don Quixote than while riding in my dilapidated machine, gazing at the windmills as my passenger side rearview mirror flaps in the breeze.
4. The view you get while crossing the bridge over Lake Audubon. I feel a sense of smallness, of vastness while looking out onto the lake. In the winter you see little ice fishing houses and I imagine the people inside. I imagine them chugging beers and telling insensitive jokes. I imagine they’re happy.
***
The fog was thick. Unlike anything I’d ever seen. I was traveling back to school from a rip roaring weekend in Fargo. I’d maybe gotten four hours of sleep. Deliriously I recounted the weekend. The Empire, then Dempsey’s…did I go to the Sidestreet? I know I went to an after party somewhere. I shook my head. I couldn’t remember.
Just seven dollars remained in wallet. I always took out a set and calculated amount of cash, leaving the rest at home. I did this so I could avoid killing myself from the over-consumption of alcohol. Out of cash, out of booze. I pulled over to roll a joint before crossing the bridge over Lake Audubon.
I don’t know why I thought it was a good idea to get high, given the low visibility. And I was crap at rolling joints. But I felt safe because I was driving pretty slow as I was trying to get fired from my job. I was a waitress at Denny’s for the late night and I hated every second I spent in that godawful restaurant. My manager had the reading level of a four year old, and if my coworkers weren’t completely braindead, they were raging alcoholics. The assistant manager was a creep too. I didn’t think I could do one more shift there.
I put my car back in drive and proceeded over the bridge. It was a little disappointing because I couldn’t see beyond the fog to get the full view of the lake. There was something ahead of me in the distance. Some kind of dog.
I pulled over by the sign reading “Emergency Stopping Only”. I put my hazards on and the shadow became clear. This was no dog. A wolf, mangled and terrified hobbled in front of my car. It appeared that she’d been in some kind of accident - but how did she even get on this bridge in the first place? She stayed by my car and I opened another pack of cigarettes. The circumstances that must have led to her arrival on this bridge baffled me. But maybe they weren’t that different from my own. I had about as much business on that bridge as she, maybe less.
Three missed calls from my employer later a highway patrolman pulled behind me. I lit another cigarette to soften the smell of weed in my vehicle. His furrowed brow twitched for just a moment as I motioned ahead toward the wolf now laying limp on the side of the bridge. Nervously he excused me, and I moved along back to my temporary home in Minot.
I don’t know whatever happened to the wolf, but I imagine it wasn’t pretty. I think about her often. She comes to me regularly in my dreams. I am her, and she is me. Two space wolves stranded on a bridge, stumbling to escape the cruel comforts of domestication.