2011 Issue - Santa Fe Community College

Rage
by William Greenway
Blow winds, crack your cheeks.
— King Lear
It’s what they say one flies into:
sudden black rain and skeletons of lightning
reeling on the wings. Once,
coming into Memphis, back to the Navy
at night, we hit the big one—a covey
of plastic glasses and magazines flushed
to flack the ceiling. Crying began.
And because I thought I’d never get
home again, I prayed like an atheist
in a foxhole for the first time forever.
Flying home was beautiful, unbounded
blue skies, clouds soft as the cotton
from aspirin bottles, the whole
dome of heaven serene
and empty as the skull after
electro-shock therapy,
the fields far below, once sere and gray,
grown green as the baize
of a billiard table, the towers
of Atlanta tall and ivory
as pieces on a chessboard.
My sweetie ran to the plane and swept
me up and kissed me home. Later
we parted, of course, the walls
of our apartment pocked
with a minefield of fist holes.
6 Santa Fe Literary Review