INTERMISSION WITH THE AVIATOR
:
The sky grew white with birds
She had told you that you could never take flight.
[blink]
The feathers fell
Revealing only the moon behind them.
[blink]
She had meant that you would thrash in the ocean
And not feel your feet leave the water.
[blink]
She had tried to leave her body behind.
But it would not stay.
As she moved towards you, it too arose from the pillows
Leaving an impression of where it had been.
[blink]
Her fingertips dug in
What had seemed like air was flesh.
Now, when she sees your name it is your body.
It takes shape as you.
[blink]
A jade seal or a curving lip
An expression [blink]
That from these heights
Is as much terror as pledge.
[blink]
VOICE MADE SMALL
:
My voice made small
travels with others
along the copper wires.
Then, there is the sea—
I do not know how sound travels
across it.
The tips of the waves,
moths that flutter toward your ears.
There is the sea—
It could carry us.
It could lose us.
Once there was a paper mill.
I brought them your letters
and your letters became
paper again.
Your voice becomes water again.
When you wrote the story
of the end
(of the world, was it?)
I was measuring the weather;
tying balloons
to the feet of pigeons
on the sidewalk.
There is a story
of a man from LA
who took flight with his lawn chair
and 45 weather balloons.
He became untethered.
The waves are still tethered,
I think.
The moon, its light,
recalls them
if we cannot.
If you know the end,
if the day has already come
and another begun for you
can you tell me of it,
so I may know
what to look for?
Carrie Olivia Adams lives in Chicago, where she works as a book publicist and serves as the poetry editor for the small press Black Ocean. She is the author of Intervening Absence (Ahsahta Press 2009) and the forthcoming 41 Jane Doe’s, which will be published with a companion DVD of poem-films (Ahsahta 2013). Her poems and films have appeared in such journals as Cannibal, DIAGRAM, theLaurel Review, Horse Less Review, Slope, and Dear Camera.