So far, there have been two people who have fallen out of my life, The first was a shock, since he was young and green It caught me by surprise, news of his great fall arrived softly but swiftly, The only time the train comes too soon, Or, if the person you’re destined to love for the rest of your life But you’re not yet prepared, you’ve not yet arrived, —A perfectly inelastic collision; a sacrifice of kinetic energy, Or perhaps it would be more like a maritime allision, Whether it be a delicate ankle stepping down Or the broad shouldered gait and Parisian way, The train comes too soon on the frozen nights And even those you know don’t know, and whom you don’t love are herded Aktion Reinhard : Bone-crushing Bełżec, Treblinka Then it is much too terrible, it should not be said, and the murderous chug So I try to be measured about airplanes and trains, Never early. Never late. Always the one I had planned to take The other boy who fell from the sky Preparing his hurt and cultivating his great wounds, They were grey and slightly crinkled at edges dog-eared by conformities, Armed with his wings and foreign words like a skein of hair trailing dappled geese, But oh, how his wings ripped when he flew, Not like Daedelus’s son, he was Phaethon, But both of my unfortunate aviators met the ground in the same terrible way. It makes mourning mothers think of the way a river meets a delta Into crags and quarries. Leaving rivulets of misspent youth and blood, flowing out; Both of my aeronauts sang the same Greek songs, Pan’s reed-pipe melody waned and split, The way their crash splintered the mourning poplar trees Like mottled bandages, like strips of failing gauze, Sang back to the way the burning earth, cracked toothless and wide-open Alani Rosa Hicks-Bartlett is a writer, translator, and photographer who lives in the SF Bay Area. She holds a PhD in Literature and Gender Studies from the University of California, Berkeley. Her work is forthcoming or has appeared in Gathering Storm, The Fourth River, Tweetlit, the Taj Mahal Review, Continuum, Renaissance, Illinois History, and Lucero. Her translation of three sonnets from the Catalan author Mercè Rodoreda I Gurguí recently appeared in Mantis: A Journal of Poetry, Criticism, and Translation, and she is currently working on a collection of villanelles. Follow her on instagram or twitter at @alanirosa
The Aviators
Suddenly. Just like that, upturned rockets whirring.
And should have been made to last.
At a stop in an airport, or during the interminable minutes between two trains.
Is of course, if you’re not there to meet it.
Because of this chance encounter gets off of the train,
So you simply cannot allow your paths to collide
Two bodies bound together.
The moving vessel of your destiny’s wooden-hulled body striking your stationary rock.
With a dark-eyed grasp for bearings, eyes shielded against the sun,
And commandeering hands that catch your attention.
In which you and everyone that you know and love,
And shuttled off to a death camp—this is what the man who loved my father told me:
And even little Madjan, right within the protective confines of the city!
Of a train sputtering thick coagulations of smoke comes much too soon.
That is, I meet them with great responsibility.
As long as the schedule runs true, but the schedule always fails us.
Was methodical about it.
He nursed his grief, fitting it with gossamer wings.
And streaked through with pulsing lavender veins.
He took care to plan his flight.
Buckling and bending and tearing and snagging under the weight of his sun-stroked body.
Who had a madder and more frenzied course.
One larger-boned, one with a larger flight.
The way the impact fractured and broke the land around them
Scaring even the gore-freckled Nereids, and the crabs with their razor-sharp claws.
As they fell like a streak of lightning, as they seethed and faded like a falling star.
Harsh and coughing, staccato and peeling.
Sang back to the dying deer who for four long years carefully peeled strips of bark
From the storm-split hardwood trees to stave off his final hunger.
Fractured the solitary lives of those of us who loved them.About the Author
