to shelter you from the air

It looks like you turn around very quickly,
legs crossed like oars,

or twist your wrist under for a moment, then back. You’re one 


of several standing shoulder-to-shoulder, making direct eye contact with the camera,
singing sotto voce sotto voce. Cut


to an airplane “passing overhead.” I can move the way
it moves to show you

Like an owl in the shape of a bat


The shape the sound your breath makes

There was water, and the lack of water, and almost nothing left


to shelter you from the air. The action
of closing one hand round the other, of placing

a hill inside a hillside. I’m trying to find the word for it. The kind of “out”


that fires break, that power goes.

ξ

Nathan Austin is the author of (glost), Tie an O, and Survey Says!, as well as the recent broadside Surround Sound (for Éliane Radigue). His work has recently appeared in P-Queue, Babel Tower Notice Board, Speculative Nonfiction, The Believer, Talisman, ToCall, and Translation: a Halophyte Collective exhibition. Two new chapbooks are forthcoming: in very Variant (Greying Ghost) and a in e’er (Hiding Press). He lives in Los Angeles.