Sunsets and Silencers

Becoming

" . . . Nietzsche in the air." -- Paul Klee, Diary

one of those spring days
when Nietzsche is in the air --

one student in the quad
with his tenor sax

working out a riff
on the Lohengrin theme,

two of the sunbathers
accompanying him

with an impromptu rumba
and now this somber girl

striding past
in her full floral skirt

as if driven
to find some sulky boyfriend

to make him understand
that her morals will be her own

Midair

It is yet another day
that she floats awake

out of a dream
that solved the problem

of holding the body in midair

without the trap
of contraption.

On her drive to the office
she's disappointed not to hear

any music that mimics
the hush of hovering

or the lush rush of soaring.
Her screensaver displays

a leaping Nureyev
who never alights.

On lunch break she recalls
those warriors skimming

with such loping grace
over roof- and treetops

and she buys one more copy
-- for a colleague's birthday --

of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
"Helium," she writes

when a meeting drowses on
and again "Helium . . . Helium,"

circling the words with balloons
that bob about on the page.

These poems are by Jack Kristiansen, who exists in William Aarnes' composition books. His poems have appeared in A Millennial Sampler of South Carolina Poetry, FIELD, Tipton Poetry Journal and The Literary Review. William Aarnes' first book, Learning to Dance, was published in 1991 by Ninety-Six Press, which also published his second collection, Predicaments, in 2001. Over the years Aarnes has had poems in such magazines as The American Scholar, The Southern Review, Barnwood Magazine, Measure, Bateau, Seneca Review, and Poetry.