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| Image source: Mahogany Airplane Models |
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 gone missing
on Saturday local time. Why am I just now
hearing about this? Cue my missing credit card.
Thank you for calling Chase-Visa, this is Mike.
Cancelled, remitted fraudulent charge, lower
interest rate in less than five minutes time.
Somewhere in the Pacific, 239 people missing.
I question the preposition: “in” or “over” or “under.”
I question memory: a single teenage night,
a school project due. Father builds a one-inch
model of the atom bomb, Little Boy. Boy,
he tells me, don’t let this happen again.
We’ve no access to flight logs, how many boys
might be crying or dead. Or will die. I lied
to my father. Put off the project so Nathan
and I could play terrorist, Israel and Palestine,
in the shed behind our house. I bind Nathan.
Demand ransom. In the shed we kiss, a mistake,
and I lop off his head. I wonder when the news
switches from “missing” to “presumed dead”
as the treadmill slows down, pulls time under.
D. Gilson is the author of Crush (Punctum Books, 2014) with Will Stockton, Brit Lit (Sibling Rivalry, 2013), and Catch & Release (Seven Kitchens, 2012), winner of the Robin Becker Chapbook Prize. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Poetry, The Indiana Review, and PANK.