JULIA MADSEN

IN-FLIGHT READING MATERIAL

THE VIEW FROM HERE

Whereas discrepancy between the beforehand and after.                      
New operations, and have worked on your behalf.                              
Have worked and rerouted, impaired, ran on nothing                                  
but expectations and the sky’s effulgence. After choosing 
beverage, or the gap between them in which boredom          
provides you with a sort of airy somnambulance. Cash only                   
flight. Bury your belongings, bury them deeper. What it means                     
to be “above.” What it means to have your back, we will                    
continue to improve at a breakneck speed of 600 mph                          
on average in the air and in the air I was enveloped                           
in somnambulance, was bored, I looked around and there                      
was nothing left. When things stop becoming things that’s when

WHEELS UP

Take off is a dream of efficiency. We’ve got places to go.                       
People to watch. We continue at a breakneck speed,                          
highlighting space as a means of cultural triangulation.
Escapement. Through the clouds or “out there.” I mean inside,                  
like a Mobius strip, but it’s all right. Just a little turbulence.
Perhaps our thoughts at this moment are an excess of everything
that happened an hour before or are delayed as a hope,                            
one shortened or suppressed inside its own desire. Finally                        
it occurs again. Put your hand on my pulse. Begin to get up                     
on your feet as the plane lands. Superheroes continue                     
their infamy in space starting on page 68, we apologize                                
for the delay, what is falling out. 

CAN YOUR CARD MAKE TRAVEL A LITTLE BIT EASIER?

There is more than one way to discover a destination.                         
There is more than one way to set down a salutary drink,                   
reach for a Kleenex, wait for the light to turn off again.                     
What we refresh in the afternoon by dinner becomes diffident
airport decoration of the American west. The desert or art                            
both punishment and familiar experience. Either we like this   
or are likened to it while taking in similar moments                             
of sky. Doing this I want too alone. I am alone                                                  
in doing this. I do this alone. 

SWEET ALOHA SAVINGS

Keep your head down and your feet on the ground                          
when it comes to investing in the final frontier.

AS COMMERCIAL SPACE TRAVEL GETS OFF                          
THE GROUND, CELEBRITIES ARE LINING UP TO BE
LAUNCHED INTO LOW EARTH ORBIT

Imagine a floating balloon that has always been. Now imagine
it as a microbe. Who knows. It will meet the multiverse
subsequent to its own resistance in a film with a beautiful
ending as it bursts into effulgence. We will be there,      
continuing to probe and probe. It extends well beyond.

SHIFTING COORDINATES

Whenever I am in Morocco, I try to squeeze in a day trip                          
to the beach outside of Tangier. Whenever I am out of sorts,              
I press the towel closer. In light of Shatoetry, a new app                         
in which you write a poem and William Shatner reads it back                      
to you, we present this visual guide to the actor’s strange                
and multifaceted career. It is a long time until we get out                   
of here. What is the true form of more. Our investment                       
in airport decoration yields to an unenthusiastic interpretation        
of our idea of the most beautiful ending, one we believe                    
might not get here, or one which provides a delayed sort                 
of longing. Cue denouement. We can see right through.                    
Now imagine it being played back just as the visuals                                
begin to collapse. Queue denouement.

FREE-FALLING, OR ALL THAT GLITTERS IN DUBAI

Being born might be like a sort of floating balloon                            
that has always been, a true form of free-falling. Watch                    
as we are delivered sitting upright, our tempers growing
diffident. We turn off the movie, look down at a city which
stands alone or brushes elbows with the water, shimmering off                    
the gulf. Lonely experience, being weathered in a storm.                  
The monied city holding nothing in each hand. Does it
somehow become more. In a magazine, visitors take photos
while riding the escalator down to the water where women       
wade in and out. We look at them from the plate-glass we visit
place to place to place this time knocking elbows in search                 
for the next manmade oasis. I can’t hear you, I say. Breath                 
on the glass. Breathe on it again. Now you are too close.

WHAT’S IN YOUR BAG

Whereas the beforehand, but after, and nothing is left.                      
Really our efforts are naked. I have a great hard-case luggage
set in gunmetal gray, hang out and share small plates                           
by the pool at a piano bar named Caid’s. The women wading                              
in and out. How very Prufrock of them. How picturesque.                  
Here is how the drama dropout-turned-Schwarzenegger 
sidekick likes to fly. A knife. I have collected various knives
from all over the world.

LAST SOUVENIR PURCHASED

It is easy being Emma Stone—or so it would seem.                        
We reroute for in-flight savings. Priority boarding. The 404                    
in Paris, where each plate is left naked. We see right through                  
the plate-glass. Riding an escalator can be a lonely experience.                     
So can being an actor. In-flight entertainment provides us                    
with dual screens doubled over themselves on the backs of each
chair, yet are nonetheless uninvasive, inspired by airport
decoration. We opt for the complimentary crossword                                   
and exchange these coordinates of cultural triangulation                        
as if the multiverse were an industry waiting at our doorstep.

“IN-FLIGHT READING MATERIAL” takes its inspiration from and incorporates, takes apart, rearranges and builds upon text found in Delta’s Sky magazine from January 2013.

Julia Madsen received an MFA in Literary Arts from Brown University and is currently a doctoral student in English/Creative Writing at the University of Denver. She is a tutor, teacher, writer, volunteer and activist. Her poems and multimedia work have appeared or are forthcoming in Caketrain, Deluge, Small Po[r]tions, Tagvverk, Black Warrior Review, Alice Blue Review, Devil’s Lake, Versal, and Cutbank.