Amy McDaniel

Delta Flight 2024

The man giving the safety

demonstration does not expect

our attention. It is a fully

private performance. If there is

an audience, it is not us,

the passengers on the plane,

it is imagined. I believe

at least 60% of men would

fall in love with me. 70%

now that another man is

actively, publicly in love with me.

I am in love with no more

than 20% of people. I can

think of only 9. The man

next to me said, “Jesus!”

when the woman in front of him

reclined her seat. He looked

at me for confirmation and yes,

it was very sudden and very

disruptive. If a man had

reclined that thoughtlessly, it

would’ve been mannish. A woman

did, so it was womanish instead.

Emotion is the province of women,

which happily situates women

as emotion’s defenders. Men

are emotion’s enemies. They fight

emotion, they are overcome. They

are colonized by emotion.

For $18 extra, I flew first class.

I skipped half the security line. I

got chardonnay and a

small, very cute banana. That’s

all. But the whole sky looked

like one rainbow.

Amy McDaniel runs 421 Atlanta, a center of literary attention and chapbook press. Her stories, poems, and essays have appeared in Tin House, PANK, The Agriculture Reader, Saveur, H_NGM_N, and elsewhere. Her most recent chapbook is Collected Adult Lessons.