“Stopover in Denver” by Adrian Slonaker

Sipping an overpriced iced mocha

on an ass-tormenting seat

during an intermission

at Denver International Airport

between Southwest flights 271 and 3404,

I’m a newcomer to Colorado –

the setting of Mork and Mindy

and the Alferd Packer Cannibal Massacre –

for two hours and twenty-five minutes unless

I decide to drift down a winding series

of walkways and elevators

(since escalators give me vertigo)

and out the door

into a mouth of Rocky Mountain sunshine,

maybe changing my name to “Silas”

and renting a Craftsman bungalow in Boulder with a

red-bearded biker called Mike who has

Meg Foster’s luminous blue eyes.

Together we’ll master

the zither, fashion God’s eyes from yarn

and popsicle sticks and banish anxiety with

worry stones and muscular hugs

in vegan leather jackets.

Or perhaps I’ll pay celibate tribute to

dead transcendentalists

amid birch trees and bone-white mountaintops while

channeling the charm of a

modern-day Aimee Semple McPherson

and fomenting faith and fame.

But now my gate is beckoning,

like so many others,

so I’ll slam-dunk the cup into the proper bin,

fold my boarding pass

and run back to

the lazy beauty of

banality.

Bio: North American nomad Adrian Slonaker works as a language boffin and is fond of thunderstorms, late-night chats, ghost stories and rock ‘n roll records. Adrian’s work, which has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the Best of the Net, has been published in WINK: Writers in the Know, The Pangolin Review, Ez.P.Zine and others.