Still Life with Love Poem
	Lesley Jenike

Audubon killed the things he loved most, locking the bodies of birds into effervescence. If I could keep all the 747s and all the prop jets that have taken me to you and have taken me away again, if I could keep them welded to wooden platforms, imaginary hangers, always taking off to the Southeast, I might not hate them so much. I might say that this is a love affair among airplanes. Forget Cinnamon Teals and Wigeon Drakes, here I am instead, done in water-color, seat 12A with Baltimore below for natural habitat, painted from memory. Unlike the bones of birds that rend and finally crack, my limbs are determined. Iíve got pins in all joints: hand is on the cheek, right leg crossed over the left, endless, with the Chesapeake always on the starboard side of the plane; this is a study in patience. And if I could catch the synapses of the brain, that slapdash impulse that nets your face and holds it inside my mind, inside the metal guts of a flying machine, there would be no more leaving and no arrival, just perfect, infinite motion.

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