Aaron Brown: “Peoria, Illinois”
PEORIA, ILLINOIS
Even the cars were half-buried in snowbanks
spun out sometime before us
on the airport drive mid-January.
And the one security worker who showed up
still found ways to work as slow as a whole team
before we entered the five-gate Valhalla, the two of us,
silent rows of seats framing the ice outside, empty charging
stations ablaze in isolation, a tomb in tundra to pass the time.
No people to watch or food to get. No wings to see
coming except the tail-engine commuter
warming its engines in the wastes of wind.
When the crew showed up, the co-pilot descended
jetway stairs to check the plane on his own, black loafers
leaving a trail of prints in the white.
And when we were boarded, strapped in, barreling
past the point where blizzard flakes become pure
white lines along the window borders
and a cloud settled around us as soon as we lifted
it was a small blessing that we made it then—
unlike the blinding whirlwind of now, not climate
but interstitial space between lovers, a slow-moving
of what once was longing. No weather delay or warning.
No crew to prepare us for the journey. Just the takeoff,
the departure, wheels lifting off a tarmac soon to not be seen.
Aaron Brown is the author most recently of the poetry collection Call Me Exile (Stephen F. Austin State University Press, 2022) and memoir Less Than What You Once Were (Unsolicited Press, 2022). His debut poetry collection, Acacia Road, won the 2016 Gerald Cable Book Award and was published by Silverfish Review Press. Brown is an assistant professor of English and directs the writing center at LeTourneau University.