Overheard in Olympia

A recent sampling of the wacky things people say in Olympia, Washington. You can’t make this stuff up!

“What? Oh, those are pigeons.”
-Fifth Street Bridge

“I love you.”
-Route 45 bus, on a cellphone, Rogers St.

“Let’s go to Safeway.”
-Cooper Point and Harrison, outside Safeway

“I’m still afraid to tell my mom I’m trans.”
-South Puget Sound Community College

“Gimme a goddamn–get outta the intersection!”
-in a car, East Side

“Where? I just see the benches.”
-Sylvester Park

“Will Grandma be at church?”
-a house

“If I have to put up with this bullshit again tomorrow… Man. I tell ya. I don’t know what I’m gonna do.”
-Fir Street

Welcome to Dactyl Plume

My hands are wings with feathers on the fingers. The fingers get in the way of the feathers, the feathers in the way of the fingers. What did feathers and fingers first learn to do together, before evolving to leave the ground, elongated on the arms of dinosaurs? What can they do together here, at the ends of my extremities?

I am neither reptile nor bird. This is a home for my hybrid hands’ offspring, creatures grasping at and prefiguring flight from their perches above the earth.