Both My Parents Were Flight Attendants So I Took to the Skies Quite Naturally
I am flying over the North Pole and am having trouble discerning whether what’s below
me is heavy cloud cover or simply snow. Up here it is most certainly cold, although I am
closer to the sun and I imagine that even though it is late July, it will be quite cold down
there too. Taking frost crystals in through the nose, I dip below the clouds and spot water,
black salt water, stewing with ice patties and the slick, shiny backs of slippery mammals.
It is on a sizeable bit of broken glacier that I stop for some rest and a snack. For pleasure,
I build a snowman and for shame, I remove my own clothes to cover her ionically
charged private parts. (She has really become “snowwoman” by now, but this doubling of
the double-u is rather awkward and so I will continue to refer to her as “snowman”). A
little audience has gathered at the tip of the drift- all whiskery faced and tittering.
Flapping flippers. I can’t tell if they are walruses or seals or something else. I was never
very zoological. However, I speared one, a small one, and fixed it for supper. The days
were beginning to grow shorter and I still had a tremendously long way to go.
Each month a contemporary poet presents three poems and one personal essay in which food is consumed, passed over, or reckoned with. Nikki is our poet for March, 2014.
Nikki Burst is a writer and food blogger living in New York City. Her work can be found at Endive Civilization, Nerve.com, The Greenpoint Gazette, and Birdsong.
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