- after "When the Universe granted my prayer I didn't want it anymore," Natalie d'Arbeloff; acrylic on canvas board, 10 x 14 inches After the multiplexes and carnivals closed for good, I learned to build little rafts out of brittle waffle cones patched together with leftover sunscreen and saltwater taffy. If some dudes managed to rig wire and feathers to their arms with honey and beeswax, why couldn't I use my own native resources? But looking out over the lip of my wobbly Ferris wheel saucer, I realized water might be the only way left to go. No one wanted to get on a plane anymore since runways and airport terminals were littered with the bones of negative pressure room tents. Sometimes, streaked by moonlight, they looked like giant blue cocoons whose flaps were shredded in a gale. The air inside had long left the building— perhaps, also the ghosts that once curled up on cots. I'd prayed for a destination that wasn't here, yet not too far in the there, there of ambiguous reassurance. I remembered some of the things we used to say to each other—like the one about the world being your oyster; or how the endless horizon means beyond imagining or don't look back.
Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.