print previewback ANUEL RODRIGUEZ
Flight Paths
Every hawk screech corrodes inside me as
yellow as the mustard-colored lichen covering
the branches of a nearby tree with fruit hanging
from its fingers like tethered moons. The gray
rocks in the area are also lichen-splattered by
autumn’s abstract expressionism. I find a plastic
container covered with a slab of rock. I open it
like a treasure chest and inside I find: a silver fork,
toy planes, and a red ball like a clown’s nose.
An aircraft cartwheel crashed somewhere in these
golden washed hills and I imagine that it fell out
of a dream. I run my finger over a vein in my
arm ike I’m tracing its flight path. And when I
lick the bony lump on the roof of my mouth, I can
almost feel its broken metal wing. I attempt to
write a poem on a piece of paper about how its
wreckage becomes scattered across the rising ground
of my chest and the corpses are carried on horseback
to my heart. I decide to draw a map of my thoracic
basket instead which I fold into a small paper plane.
Then I place it inside the container and close the lid.
What I really want to say is that I no longer feel like
I’m losing my battle with gravity. That I no longer
feel like a black hole is sucking the life out of my
body like an orca sucking a liver out of a shark.
I think of every human who has ever reached this peak.
And I wonder if they’ve ever found pieces of sky
twisted in the grass rusted with leaves, or felt the
hot shadow of the wind like sparks on their tongues. 
Alviso
Flight Paths
Notes from the White City