If poetry's element is air, then Kate Durbin's words soar and swirl like Amelia Earhart's own stunts--these pages give voice to forgotten courage and entrance us with their daring.

--Gabriela Jauregui, author of Controlled Decay

There are compelling personalities whose narratives offer no closure. Amelia Earhart's is one of these. Kate Durbin's collection of poems about Earhart satisfies one of our questions--what might she have been thinking, what words would she have offered about her final days when she knew she and her co-pilot were beyond hope? Durbin's poems play on many levels and move the action against scrims of sky and weather. This collection, personal and intense, is a valentine to flight and to unfulfilled dreams.

--Eloise Klein Healy, author of The Islands Project: Poems for Sappho

Kate Durbin’s first collection of poetry, The Ravenous Audience, is forthcoming from Black Goat Press/Akashic Books. She lives in Whittier, CA.

SIGNS

But sent from whom? One to be trusted, or is it the madman in the heavens, boot lifted to crush the propeller of my plane?

My period a week early. Bloated belly, achy joints, brain bad. Last night I snapped at G when he took my soup bowl from the table too soon. He gave me a husband’s cautionary gaze. G worries so, despite faith in my abilities. He made dinner again without complaint, only silent brooding over boiling potatoes and leeks. Doesn’t he know I crave encouragement more than sustenance, wild hope more than prudence? I want to shout my thrill throughout the halls of our house—to dash outside and shake my fists at the vast waiting sky! Yet out of respect for his tender unease, I remain quiet. Find release only in these scribblings.