{"id":6081,"date":"2026-04-21T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-21T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/novusliterary.com\/?p=6081"},"modified":"2026-04-02T14:52:45","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T19:52:45","slug":"kansas-summer-airplane-hangar-1990","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/novusliterary.com\/2025-archive\/kansas-summer-airplane-hangar-1990\/","title":{"rendered":"Kansas Summer, Airplane Hangar, 1990"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<pre class=\"wp-block-verse\">Those were the longest nights of summer\u2014<br>the small-town airplane hanger <br>used only for two-props spraying poison over <br>corn and wheat and us until November.<br><br>A new pilot, eighteen-year-old learner\u2019s permit,<br>he sailed endless Kansas sky, much farther<br>than the fields barren of timber:<br>unclouded eyes and thoughtless, an explorer.<br><br>At sixteen, I\u2019d never been kissed, his neighbor,<br>then I dissolved under his hands, darkness no longer<br>as our mouths crimped together like pie crusts in the larder.<br>Paula Abdul sang \u201cI Need You,\u201d and I wanted no other. <br><br>Too young to date, I asked permission of my mother,<br>who loved him because of my dead brother, <br>born a week apart from him and us in October.<br>His mother, weeping, walked the ER corridor to see her. <br><br>We\u2019d fly over the fields, through the ether.<br>What youthful evening could be finer? <br>Our small lives filled fully, kernels of grain: our hunger <br>for more life beyond this and one another.<br><br>We\u2019d land, then lie in his Dodge Caravan, naked upon the leather,<br>mapping our fragile ankles, spines, and necks with tender<br>kisses and the hands so grasping but still lighter <br>than the air, the plane, the summer.<br><br>He left in fall for college to become a preacher.<br>I write him a long, then longer letter.<br>I wait until October, crying harder.<br>I drive out once to the hangar.  Nothing hovers.<\/pre>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Those were the longest nights of summer\u2014the small-town airplane hanger used only for two-props spraying poison over corn and wheat and us until November.A new pilot, eighteen-year-old learner\u2019s permit,he sailed endless Kansas sky, much fartherthan the fields barren of timber:unclouded eyes and thoughtless, an explorer.At sixteen, I\u2019d never been kissed, his neighbor,then I dissolved under [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_editorskit_title_hidden":false,"_editorskit_reading_time":0,"_editorskit_is_block_options_detached":false,"_editorskit_block_options_position":"{}","_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"art_contributors":[],"literary_contributors":[479],"class_list":["post-6081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry","literary_contributors-gribben-bryn"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/novusliterary.com\/2025-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/novusliterary.com\/2025-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/novusliterary.com\/2025-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novusliterary.com\/2025-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novusliterary.com\/2025-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6081"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/novusliterary.com\/2025-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6081\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6094,"href":"https:\/\/novusliterary.com\/2025-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6081\/revisions\/6094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/novusliterary.com\/2025-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novusliterary.com\/2025-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novusliterary.com\/2025-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6081"},{"taxonomy":"art_contributors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novusliterary.com\/2025-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/art_contributors?post=6081"},{"taxonomy":"literary_contributors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novusliterary.com\/2025-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/literary_contributors?post=6081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}