Mary-Alice Daniel was born in Nigeria and raised in England. She received her MFA from the University of Michigan. She has previously been published (or has work forthcoming) in New England Review, Mid-American Review, Salon, and Anti-.---------
Slipstream
Ask anyone who plays around with planes on weekends.
They'll tell you: propeller accidents are common.
Really, the only thing remarkable about Anne's case
is that she lives.
Missing one arm and perplexing her husband, daughter and the police.
The confetti they'd found on the tarmac
(pieces of a map sprinkled around her arm and a thumb)
convinced them she had not meant to walk just there.
She'd been overworked and restless at night.
Perhaps she’d been looking down at a weather report, turning
over something she didn’t understand about sky charts,
and in the whir of three broad blades moving
so fast as to be imperceptible, she
surprised herself.
Was she lured into the vortex like stepping out over an easy ledge.
Did she find the whorl irresistible.
How could she, inches away from what would engulf her,
neglect the insistent wind?