Understory 2020 Main Menu Masthead From the Student Editors and Faculty Creative Works: Poetry Haiku: Dewdrops Petrarchan Sonnet: Shallow Waters Cabin Fever: Cantwell Tree and River Dying Day Haiku Blue Moon Spring A Body of Water Seward Constellations of Ink and Dust Just One More Day White Flower My Night Sky How to Ask Deep Blue The Dancer The Senses Insomnia Physics for Poets Free Verse: Two Waves Within A Pond Love Letter Grief Evolved Good Days Parched Runaway Boy Ballad of the Love Affair River My Body is Like Water Patience and Irony Lethologica Guiding Light The Cave Painter Miles Poem, Based off a scene from Into the Spiderverse Balloons Creative Works: Prose Fairy Dance The Starving Artist’s Lament Face of Death A Silent Spectrum Time Really Does Fly The Metamorphosis Indigo Skies 1807 Under the Influence Hall of Mirrors Creative Works: Screenplay Animal ANNIE WANG is a senior pursuing a Baccalaureate degree in English with a minor in Creative Writing. Annie is a student at UAA. She says she can write decently. Creative Works: Literary Nonfiction Friends in Strange Places “Major” Trauma The Tightrope of Addiction English Studies: Language and Linguistics Political Profanity on Social Media: A Sociolinguistic View on Public Discussions about US Political Events Alaska Resident Fishermen’s Union: Personal Statements Walter T. Granath: An Airmen in Alaska English Studies: Literary Analysis Female Voice and Agency in “The Wife’s Lament” The Protofeminist Perspective of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Wife of Bath Antithesis in Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing English Studies: Rhetoric and Composition Ethos, Pathos, and Logos in Mr. Rogers’ Address to Congress Five Elements of Literacy in a Miscarriage Group The Library and Literacy of Technology Social Psychology in Clinical Practice: A Prerequisite for Effective Therapeutic Treatment Net-Working Together: Connecting (online) for Community Health Promotion in Southeast Alaska UAA’s Critical Thinking Ecosystem The Evolution of Planned Parenthood

Window Seat

36847
I.
When I booked our flights to Portland                           you say 
“I want the window seat.”
And I say     “okay.”         And determine
that I will always have to sit in the middle now

II.
In the airport I drink a Bloody Mary and tell you                it’s tradition
We share our overpriced food
     and we kiss in the line to board the plane

III.
We put the rental car in my name
Because you’re not quite 25 yet
and you don’t like driving
unless it’s from the back seat

IV.
On the way to my brother’s wedding             we stop everywhere—
all the places
my mother showed me
when I was little:

Multnomah Falls
Bonneville Hatchery
The scenic route through highway 30
      We stop in The Dalles for eggs benedict

V.
In Arlington, my family crowds around you—
curious over who is engaged
to my mother’s crazy daughter
you take in stride, though you dislike people
you reassure them;
promise to take care of me
and remind whose wedding
it is.

VI.
After the ceremony         we go to my uncle’s house
he wasn’t invited
My other Aunts and uncles are there    you call them aunt and uncle too
And I love you so much more

VII.
We drive that same night to the coast     because you’ve never seen 
the ocean
And although I talk about Newport the entire time      we head 
      toward Seaside
and the sky turns mean and black
I drive through flooded highways
for just a moment
we are worried
after a tree falls down
right behind us

VIII.
When we check into the hotel               they are surprised
that we drove through this weather
When we check out                 you forget your headphones

IX.
We walk along the sandy beach         salt from the sea, blowing 
into our hair
The air smells like seaweed
and we run from the foam
          when the waves crash into the malleable shore
You let me take a picture of us                 and you cherish it like a relic

X.
We drive back to Portland        after stopping in Astoria
        to eat
I tell you about I girl who lives here
who I used to work with           when I answered 911 calls
but we don’t tell her we are in town

XI.
Back in Portland, we go to Ikea
we buy a coffee table
we eat BBQ near the airport
and you tell me I can have the window seat

XII.
Inside of PDX        I stick to my tradition
and you say you will start your own
we kiss in the line to board the plane
I insist you take the window seat
      you let me sleep in your lap the whole way home.

__________________________________
JULIE BROUGHTON is a sophomore pursuing a Baccalaureate degree in [LANGUAGE: GERMAN AND SPANISH] with a minor in Creative Writing. Julie says she overindulges in the finer things in life.

This page has paths:

  1. Understory 2020 University of Alaska Anchorage Department of English