In the Air

by Elisabeth Smith Wood

The photo he chose as his
front man was a sulking virtuoso,
a guileless rabble-rouser
hidden behind a hirsute hand
spread wide enough to
smirk out from his persona.

Besotted by flaxen inflection,
he focused his affection and courted her by
blue light at thorny ends of
dark nights with the cursor casting
dares from another hemisphere.

Be careful of me, he began. I don’t know my
strength in these matters.
Grumbled bravado streamed from tethered
tap-tap-tapping to midget genius gadgets.

Don’t ask what I want to be
when I grow up, he warned. And if you’re
looking for a superhero, a sugar daddy,
a pansy or a Romeo, you’ve come to the
wrong instant message.

But I will smooth stuccoed walls
before I take you against them.
I will call you kitten when I weep in your hair
and every night I will swim 7000 nautical
miles to sleep at your side.

Over knotted webs and inter nets a flightless
bird booked flight to cross ocean after
ocean to brave her hurricane shuttered door.

Come in, come in, she said as she refused to see
his broken plastic shoes. She handed him a wine
glass and traded spindled legs to lean on.

Did you know, she asked, that flamingos mainly fly at night?
Angling closer she blushed and said, they soar hundreds
and hundreds of miles to nest from home to home.