Flying Island

Anna Vasileva by John Sherman “We ate wallpaper glue and rancid horse meat and even scraped the spoiled milk off the bottom of the fridges in the yogurt factory…. Back then, I ate whatever I could. I even ate flowers.”            Anna Vasileva, a Russian woman describing how she survived World War            II, The New York Times Magazine, February 24, 2002 bringing the fragile petals to her mouth she is surprised the occasional lavenders lack the taste of their color brightly displayed against her small rough hands are scarlets perfect whites glorious pinks bursting out of   the ends of their green stems that she also eats the bitterness ignored as she stifles her own           I always admired flowers           finding fields of them a shock    ...

Fall Creek Parkway Indianapolis 1959 by John Sherman I know just where she was along fall creek parkway south of the marott apartments that I now drive by every week   how often I glance at the sidewalk that I have designated the very spot where she was in full stride on her way to school when a young white boy cried out at her from the yellow bus that rushed into her life and pushed on through heavy traffic before she could hear our collective gasp and our own words of anger at an unseemly act   a frozen series of moments remembered: the back of the girl’s head the long gray coat the shoulders bent over an armful of books a second or two before his sudden leap across the bus to get to the window   his word our reaction   as adults we remember most clearly the split-second joyful and hurtful intensities of childhood: the boy’s sudden leap into the air the jerk of our heads in his direction the open mouthed...