B.A. Van Sise
The Blue Angels
of all the things that can kill you,
this, the prettiest: eight jets
that fan out like playing cards
over a beach full of boys
cheering for freedom. Each
can carry 17,750 pounds of
explosives, which is probably
enough to ruin a volleyball
game. or a barbecue. a
first communion. or even
a funeral. today, they don’t
vaporize anybody; tomorrow,
they’re on to Eau Claire.
An hour after they slink
over the horizon, an army
arrives: dressed in green,
tight blue gloves on each hand,
pulling beer cans out of the sand.
The Stupidest Man I’ve Ever Met
the daring rarely do anything. But
in a feat of derring do a man who,
because his checks all bounced,
and his wife did, too, has leapt
from the Verrazano Bridge
and changed his mind on the
way down. The water is cold
enough to notice, and he notices
that when he hits it his bones
don’t break, though he’s in a
traffic lane with two large cargo
ships barreling closer: the most
danger he’s even seen coming
after he’s been dead, dead, deader
than dead for four full seconds of
falling from an appalling height
into a current in which he is currently
not just alive, but thriving. And here
we find him, throw him a bright
orange float to preserve his life:
no money, no wife, but still
richer and more in love, now,
than anyone there’s ever been,
thrilled to be. again. and on terra
firma— even if it’s a boat being
rocked by waves, near to be
split in two by giant hulking ships.
And yet: the stupidest man I’ve ever met
is wet. And panting. And moving.
“Both of these pieces were written at the end of the day after (public affairs) missions for the Coast Guard. ‘The Blue Angels’ was written in a Wendy’s while eating a double cheeseburger after spending the day on a cutter covering an air show the USCG was securing; ‘The Stupidest Man I Ever Met’ was written at dusk on a small boat off of Staten Island in bad swells, while I was about as green as a head of lettuce.” —B.A. Van Sise
B.A. Van Sise is an author, curator and photographic artist with three monographs: the visual poetry anthology Children of Grass with Mary-Louise Parker, Invited to Life with Mayim Bialik and Sabrina Orah Mark, and On the National Language with DeLanna Studi. In photography he has been a finalist for the Meitar Award for Excellence in Photography and Critical Mass, and is a Phillip and Edith Leonian Foundation grant recipient, a two time Prix de la Photographie Paris award-winner, a New York State Council on the Arts/New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow in Photography, and a winner of the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences’ Anthem Award. For nonfiction he has been a finalist for the Travel Media Awards for feature writing and the INDIES Book of the Year, and is a winner of the Lascaux Prize for Nonfiction, and for poetry he has been a finalist for the Rattle Poetry Prize and Kenyon Poetry Prize, and a winner of the Colonel Darron L. Wright Memorial Writing Awards and the Independent Book Publishers Awards gold medal, twice.
