Амброз Бирс - Flight or Fright - 17 Turbulent Tales

Into anotherheavy silverunbreathableslowingsaving
Element: there is waterthere is time to perfect all the fine
Points of divingfeet togethertoes pointedhands shaped right
To insert her into water like a needleto come out healthily dripping
And be handed a Coca-Colathere they arethere are the waters
Of lifethe moon packed and coiled in a reservoirso let me begin
To plane across the night air of Kansasopening my eyes superhumanly
Brightto the damned moonopening the natural wings of my jacket
By Don Lopermoving like a hunting owl toward the glitter of water
One cannot just falljust tumble screaming all that timeone must use
It she is now through with allthrough allcloudsdamphair
Straightenedthe last wisp of fog pulled apart on her face like wool revealing
New darksnew progressions of headlights along dirt roads from chaos

And nighta gradual warminga new-made, inevitable world of one’s own
Countrya great stone of light in its waiting watersholdhold out
For water: who knows when what correct young woman must take up her body
And flyand head for the moon-crazed inner eye of midwest imprisoned
Waterstored up for her for yearsthe arms of her jacket slipping
Air up her sleeves to goall over her? What final things can be said
Of one who starts her sheerly in her body in the high middle of night
Airto track down water like a rabbit where it lies like life itself
Off to the right in Kansas? She goes towardthe blazing-bare lake
Her skirts neather hands and face warmed more and more by the air
Rising from pastures of beansand under herunder chenille bedspreads
The farm girls are feeling the goddess in them struggle and rise brooding
On the scratch-shining posts of the beddreaming of female signs
Of the moonmale blood like ironof what is really said by the moan
Of airliners passing over them at dead of midwest midnightpassing
Over brush firesburning out in silence on little hillsand will wake
To see the woman they should bestruggling on the rooftree to become
Stars: for her the ground is closerwater is nearershe passes
Itthen banksturnsher sleeves fluttering differently as she rolls
Out to face the east, where the sun shall come up from wheatfields she must
Do something with waterfly to itfall in itdrink itrise
From itbut there is none left upon earththe clouds have drunk it back
The plants have sucked it downthere are standing toward her only
The common fields of deathshe comes back from flying to falling
Returns to a powerful crythe silent scream with which she blew down
The coupled door of the airlinernearlynearly losing hold
Of what she has doneremembersremembers the shape at the heart
Of cloudfashionably swirlingremembers she still has time to die
Beyond explanation. Let her now take off her hat in summer air the contour
Of cornfieldsand have enough time to kick off her one remaining
Shoe with the toesof the other footto unhook her stockings
With calm fingers, noting how fatally easy it is to undress in midair
Near deathwhen the body will assume without effort any position
Except the one that will sustain itenable it to riselive
Not dienine farms hover closewideneight of them separate, leaving
One in the middlethen the fields of that farm do the samethere is no
Way to back offfrom her chosen groundbut she sheds the jacket
With its silver sad impotent wingssheds the bat’s guiding tailpiece
Of her skirtthe lightning-charged clinging of her blousethe intimate
Inner flying-garment of her slip in which she rides like the holy ghost
Of a virginsheds the long windsocks of her stockingsabsurd
Brassierethen feels the girdle required by regulations squirming
Off her: no longer monobuttockedshe feels the girdle fluttershake
In her handand floatupwardher clothes rising off her ascending
Into cloudand fights away from her head the last sharp dangerous shoe
Like a dumb birdand now will drop insoonnow will drop

In like thisthe greatest thing that ever came to Kansasdown from all
Heightsall levels of American breathlayered in the lungs from the frail
Chill of space to the loam where extinction slumbers in corn tassels thickly
And breathes like rich farmers counting: will come along them after
Her last superhuman actthe last slow careful passing of her hands
All over her unharmed bodydesired by every sleeper in his dream:
Boys finding for the first time their loins filled with heart’s blood
Widowed farmers whose hands float under light covers to find themselves
Arisen at sunrisethe splendid position of blood unearthly drawn
Toward cloudsall feel somethingpass over them as she passes
Her palms over her long legs her small breastsand deeply between
Her thighsher hair shot loose from all pinsstreaming in the wind
Of her bodylet her come openlytrying at the last second to land
On her backThis is itTHIS
All those who find her impressed
In the soft loamgone downdriven well into the image of her body
The furrows for miles flowing in upon her where she lies very deep
In her mortal outlinein the earth as it is in cloudcan tell nothing
But that she is thereinexplicableunquestionableand remember
That something broke in them as welland began to live and die more
When they walked for no reason into their fields to where the whole earth
Caught herinterrupted her maiden flighttold her how to lie she cannot
Turngo awaycannot movecannot slide off it and assume another
Positionno sky-diver with any grin could save herhold her in his arms
Plummet with herunfold above her his wedding silksshe can no longer
Mark the rain with whirling women that take the place of a dead wife
Or the goddess in Norwegian farm girlsor all the back-breaking whores
Of Wichita. All the known air above her is not giving up quite one
Breathit is all goneand yet not deadnot anywhere else
Quitelying still in the field on her backsensing the smells
Of incessant growth try to lift hera little sight left in the corner
Of one eyefadingseeing something wavelies believing
That she could have made itat the best part of her brief goddess
Stateto watergone in headfirstcome out smilinginvulnerable
Girl in a bathing-suit adbut she is lying like a sunbather at the last
Of moonlighthalf-buried in her impact on the earthnot far
From a railroad trestlea water tankshe could see if she could
Raise her head from her modest holewith her clothes beginning
To come down all over Kansasinto busheson the dewy sixth green
Of a golf courseone shoeher girdle coming down fantastically
On a clothesline, where it belongsher blouse on a lightning rod:

Lies in the fieldsin this fieldon her broken back as though on
A cloud she cannot drop throughwhile farmers sleepwalk without
Their women from housesa walk like falling toward the far waters
Of lifein moonlighttoward the dreamed eternal meaning of their farms
Toward the flowering of the harvest in their handsthat tragic cost
Feels herself gogo towardgo outwardbreathes at last fully
Notand trieslessoncetriestriesAH, GOD—