by Kirby Wright
The pink balloon flies above the fair, a dream lost in the sky. The jet stream hurls it into the clouds. A boy on an Airbus sees pink just beyond the steel wing of his plane. The helium inside weakens. A downdraft catches the balloon. It falls into a crater and lands on a secret lake. A pelican snaps at it, thinking it’s a puffy salmon. “I am not edible!” the balloon tells the pelican but they don’t speak the same language. The balloon drifts into the bird’s belly. It remembers the girl who picked it out from over 100 balloons, holding it tight by its tail.
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ABOUT THE POET ~
Kirby Wright was born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii. He is a graduate of Punahou School in Honolulu and the University of California at San Diego. He received his MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. Wright has been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes and is a past recipient of the Jodi Stutz Memorial Prize in Poetry, the Ann Fields Poetry Prize, the Academy of American Poets Award, the Browning Society Award for Dramatic Monologue, and Arts Council Silicon Valley Fellowships in Poetry and The Novel. BEFORE THE CITY, his first book of poetry, took First Place at the 2003 San Diego Book Awards. Wright is also the author of the companion novels PUNAHOU BLUES and MOLOKA’I NUI AHINA, both set in Hawaii. He was a Visiting Writer at the 2009 International Writers Conference in Hong Kong, where he represented the Pacific Rim region of Hawaii. He was also a Visiting Writer at the 2010 Martha’s Vineyard Writers Residency in Edgartown, Mass., and the 2011 Artist in Residence at Milkwood International, Czech Republic.
Last updated October 17, 2011