Flying Island

Cuban Missile Crisis Anxiety by Steve Brammell Lunch in a brown paper bag, eating in the bleachers, reading my Lord of the Flies , the other kids loud, but not enough to hide the sudden sirens in the distance only I can hear. I try not to move too fast across the basketball court, its circle a bullseye, push the bar on the exit door, the runaway elevator I’m trapped on never reaching bottom. Outside I sprint to the edge of the playground, look west where steel mills never stop smoking and the Nike base, with its white-finned rockets, guards against those slow bombers of another era. Just beyond the curve of the earth Chicago is the prize. I estimate the minutes it will take for grinning Khrushchev’s missiles to cross the Early Warning Line, and how many more until the people, now alert in the streets with nowhere to go, all look up, just like me, and watch the warheads, bright in the autumn sun, fall like Armageddon’s stars. F...