Above & Beyond

I’m losing touch with our air war–
sharp words scratching their vapour trails 
across a touchy sky, distantly 
launched with the trajectories of 

all missiles, arrows, stones, the 
physics of anger incongruous next to
the softness of cloud. So many 
criss-crossing streams of spent fuel, 

tired antagonisms. Now, we are
often just droning. I’m losing direction, 
and the infrastructure of offence to 
thrust new weapons skyward is wearing 

down. Rusting towns have sprung up
like weeds around the launch site, a 
prosaic place, where we detonated the 
mutually assured deconstruction of us.

I’m hoping the winds and rain arrive soon,
with their power of dispersal. For the
erasure of vaporous traces from our pale 
faces, from reminders of acid-isms and 

accusations, from remonstrance and 
rebuke. Maybe then I’ll pilot a skywriter 
with silver fuselage, to go up and put 
some new grammar on that blue board.

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Chris Parsons’ writing appears in Blackmail Press, First Literary Review East, The Honest Ulsterman, Landfall, Shot Glass Journal, Southerly, takahē, New Zealand Listener, Turbine | Kapohau, and elsewhere. Chris lives in Aotearoa New Zealand after teaching English in Japan for some years.