Angel by Graig Anderson, KNOCK #10

What Connects You to the Fly-Over States?

Beneath your comfortable traveling shoes,
a rumble, and literal tons of emptiness
above grassland that doesn’t care if you eat from it
or plunge to meet it. So fly over, move through.
You’ll never step on the same prairie twice.
Fly over the metal insect miracle of the combine,
harvest guided by a satellite staring down
to the edge of the oceanic fields.
Pumped circles scale the land with green,
a bread-basket dragon drinking from deep wells.
Shapes you see from the plane are invisible
at the level of fences, road signs, dead towns buried
by the curled and lifted turf of the dust bowl.
Nomads migrate through, stop, eat,
make their way West or, like you, back East.
They cross you going north, going south
make their connection, depart. Movie stars,
prostitutes, milk, all come from somewhere,
Flyover because untouristed, because empty.
Flyover because full
of black flies and soy and sky.

James Engelhardt’s poems have appeared in Lilies and Cannonballs Review, Natural Bridge, Elsewhere, Hawk and Handsaw and Paddlefish. His ecopoetry manifesto can be found at octopusmagazine.com. Originally from Western North Carolina, he is now in Lincoln, NE pursuing a Ph.D. in poetry. He is the Managing Editor of Prairie Schooner.

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