It’s a Bird! It’s a Plane!

— Yingqi Lu

            It was one of those cases that required panoramic vision:
Look straight ahead:     a gilded wall

Look from above:         a sun-tanned field. two star-shaped
            dents, our bodies
                        mistaken as golden.

I said so let the sky be our
                                               testimony
.          But testimonies required
proof, & the sky had no            shutter. A flock

of wild geese chevroned by, what say we

strap     you to the           back of one of them
, you proffered,
pinning             my arms            up high. A human
drone is the next best thing to a                                      bird’s eye view.

Up there, I felt ugly. Not streamlined enough to be a plane,
            Nor ethereal enough to be a bird.
But you called me your             mid-western Icarus,
            your makeshift deity,                                          & made me angel

hair pasta for early dinner,     tossed in grass plucked
            from your driveway that we
pretended to be fancy                herbs. All night, I stared at the angel
strands              stuck                 in the strainer,
            flaxen like us
up        against            the sun.


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