Closing out Issue 7 with fiction by Melissa Haley and poetry by Jim Natal
Dear Readers,
Well, folks, that’s a wrap on Issue 7.
But we’re not going out before we bring you amazing work by two more incredible writers: fiction by Melissa Haley and poetry by Jim Natal. We know you’ll love this work and it feels good to close out on it.
We’re thrilled about each and every aspect of Issue 7 and hope you have been, too. Now it’s time for your faithful editors to hit the Air/Light clubhouse for a schvitz and some R&R.
But don’t worry — we’ll be back in the summer for Issue 8, so stay tuned!
✌️
The Editors
“Alias Intrepid” by Melissa Haley
1. Traffic Patterns
I worked hard on my pilotage the summer of 1994. Pilotage: aircraft navigation by observation of ground features and the use of charts and maps. My Manual of Flight instructed me to use good checkpoints for proper orientation, to know where I was. A grain elevator perhaps, a racetrack or stadium. Bridges make excellent checkpoints. I could see the bridges of Portland from the window of my studio apartment. I could see all of downtown and the hills beyond, the yellow Go-By-Train neon sign blinking in stages at Union Station and, closer in, the 24-hour bowling alley with its Pump Room cocktail lounge and the street lamps down Alder, lit up in winter fog.
I flew to Eugene solo, getting lost in a desolate stretch of the Willamette Valley. I found my way again with the help of a particular bend in the river. In the air, I could find my way. On the ground, I was still lost, looking out my window at the morning clouds burning off, at a carnival along the river, at unseasonal fireworks. I fooled around with Will, who had a girlfriend; I helped him cheat on my single futon mattress after too many rum and sodas at the Monte Carlo. The wind was blowing hard, stirring up all the loose debris in my messy room—my floor with its tides, clothes and papers drifting toward the walls and gathering around chairs.
Most pilots are subject to certain illusions during night flying, the manual says. My journal notes a dream I have of taking off at night, barreling down the runway and lifting into pitch darkness, no lights, only stars.
“My Father Was a Firm Believer” and “Listening Wind” by Jim Natal
MY FATHER WAS A FIRM BELIEVER
in Reader’s Digest. Every year he’d gift me
a subscription and every year I’d tease him
that I’d never seen a magazine so perfect
for the bathroom, regular as bran, one muffin
of reading a day, every day of the month—
31, 30, and one with 28—features you could
get through in bowel movement time and maybe
sneak in a “Laughter Is the Best Medicine” joke
or “Life in These United States” anecdote
before flushing. Even the page size, the cover
format, was a perfect fit for a toilet tank.
Whole novels were condensed to editorial
essences, first-person essays reduced to chance
crossings of paths, one shared intersection,
a single transformational incident recalled or
character encountered that left an impression
enduring as dinosaur tracks in high mesa clay.