FANTASY
for Jeffrey
by Nicolas Destino
We loved wind so much that we
talked about buying kites. When we
finally bought kites, we continued to
talk about flying them on windy
days.
We talked about disasters, where the
kites would tangle into wind, how far
into things we loved, upward and
away from the sticky beach.
When we reviewed all possible
outcomes for disasters, we went
there, to the sticky beach, with our
kites, to the boardwalk where a sign
alerted us that all wind was cancelled
until we were ready to lose one
another.
(“Fantasy” will appear in Heartwrecks (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2013) and is printed here today with permission from the poet.)
Nicolas Destino’s work has appeared in The American Poetry Journal, The Bellevue Literary Review, Barge Journal, 580split, 322 Review, and others. He is a graduate of the MFA program at Goddard College, and his first full-length collection of poems, Heartwrecks, was released by Sibling Rivalry Press in 2013.
Editor’s Note: The Eastern Seaboard is struggling through the aftermath of disaster. ‘Superstorm Sandy,’ as the powers that be have dubbed her, has devastated New England and neighboring areas, hitting hardest in New Jersey and New York City. Your faithful editor of this Saturday Poetry Series has been without power, internet, and cell phone reception for days. But in times of crisis people come together and rise to the challenge. On the micro level, this poet and editor has been taken in by her neighbors, poets and artists with electricity and mean Italian cooking skills. Nicolas Destino and his husband Seth Ruggles-Hiler have opened their home to me and mine, and in the process of this disaster-togetherness I have had the opportunity to read Nicolas Destino’s Heartwrecks from cover to cover. I am humbled in the presence of greatness.
Today’s poem, from Destino’s forthcoming debut collection, was chosen for the ways in which it resonates with the disaster at hand. The power of the wind, the survival and destruction of the beach and boardwalk, the contemplation of possible outcomes of disaster, and the fact that, in the end, it is our human bonds that matter most. A deeply personal poem in nature, “Fantasy” speaks not only to love and loss between two souls, but to that which is far more powerful than us, from the heart through the forces of nature.
Want to read more by and about Nicolas Destino?
Bellevue Literary Review
322 Review
Verse Daily
As It Ought To Be 
Beyond the awesome sea~~~what can I say but lost, like the cancelled wind
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