Editor Selections for Issue 277
Poetry & Short Fiction

I’ve Never Seen the Northern Lights,

but tonight, i look for them again in the wasilla sky. no dice. god has clipped the toenail moon and hid the stars behind a silver haze. up near the arctic circle, he’s painting his cheeks in violets, greens, and starry nightshade glitter. lip syncing blizzardy gospel tunes in fairbanks and nome. stoking the celestial light show with his ornate hand fan for everyone except me. i can’t see any whirling magnetic fields from this frozen meadow lake. my mind feeds me a faded night mirage instead. i can only imagine what they look like. the pretty stellar peacocks keep avoiding me and my bucket list. as a consolation, i made a pilgrimage to see the mother of american mountains. from talkeetna on the susitna, a wall of clouds obscured the vista. it seems that i’m always out of season. even for twenty thousand foot peaks. god’s never felt more out of reach than in this dirty snowmelt town on the cook inlet. it’d just be nice to see a neon sign up in the firmament with his signature on it. if this is actually heaven like the lucky folks say, then i haven’t been given any angel wings yet. i hope i’m not forsaken. or worse, forgotten by a preoccupied god. if i woke up tomorrow knowing how to fly, i’d soar to the summit of denali. past the chugach range and over the slurry seas. and i’d look god in the face, watching the dancing colors up in the thermosphere. smiling from ear to ear on top of the world, with my beauty hungry eyes like spinning pinwheels.

~~~

Nicholas Barnes is a poet living in Portland, Oregon, whose work has appeared in over eighty publications including Redivider, HAD, and Baltimore Review. His debut chapbook, Restland, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press in 2025.