Self Portrait as a Wind Turbine Blade in the Midwest

At birth, I was a middle-aged woman. 

I’ve been touched by more hands and wings—

Every morning, a little sleep just after 

sunrise, and then I change direction. Every 

morning, I’m wet as the girl who just figured 

out how to come. After the trucks with their 

charges: Holsteins, Bovines, corn, and gasoline. 

What it’s like to be a part of the desert. What it’s 

like to never leave home. I used to think I was 

too good for stasis, listing the cities where I’d lived 

in my five-sentence bio. Listing my aggressions 

like beach glass on a salt-free shore. I used to think

I was an orphan. My father said it was better to be 

a big fish in a small pond than a small fish in the ocean. 

I read JAWS yesterday for the first time. I read 

the back of my sunscreen tube and found Round-up. 

Afternoons are hot. Evenings swarm with six-

legged music—my music is slower—a ditty 

that can’t be covered. I bought a noise machine 

to drown out the trees. I bought a noise machine 

to drown out my complaints. In another life 

I am Ferris-wheel, a carousel, a vulture.

---

ANDREA ENGLAND is the recent recipient of the 2024 Patricia Dobler Award, co-editor of Scientists and Poets #Resist (Brill, 2019) the author of Other Geographies (Creative Justice Press, 2017), and Inventory of a Field (FLP, 2014). Her work is forthcoming in the I-70 Review, Rising From the Ashes: Musings on Menopause, The Nature of Our Times, The Pittsburgh Quarterly, and Madwomen From the Attic. She is an adjunct for Southern New Hampshire University COCE, and the Writing Specialist for Western Michigan University's athletic department.

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