K.A. Thomas has appeared in i.e.magazine, Tintern Abbey, and The Texas Review. Her work placed in The Houston Press 1999 Poetry Contest and she was featured on ABCnews.com's National Poetry Month site in 1998 and 1999. She lives in Houston with poet M. Alexander and her son Tristan. Dark Planet is designed and edited by Lucy A. Snyder. If you spot any errors, or if you have any comments, please contact her at lusnyde@cyberus.ca. All materials copyright 1996-2000 by their respective creators. No stories, articles, poems or images from this webzine may be posted or published without the written consent of their creator(s).

X Marks the Spot by K.A. Thomas Amelia Earhart piloted Eleanor Roosevelt, in evening dress, to Baltimore just after she became First Lady. She was so enthusiastic about the flight she wanted Earhart to give her lessons.       The president said no.       -- Fact a Day Calendar, January 22, 1999   If Dana Scully got her wish to be Eleanor Roosevelt for one day, let it be: March 7th, 1933. She is a knockout in Chanel's black box-jacket suit. She has a matching Glock in her handbag. She's not yet a delegate to the UN, not yet chairman of the Commission for Human Rights -- has never been a special agent. She's just niece of Theodore, wife of Franklin -- the First Lady who wants to fly. She tells Amelia she's been alienated from the President since 1921, since the poliomyelitis. She explains: inflamed motor neurons, & her dream, where a man called Mulder tells her to believe that the truth is out there somewhere in the gas-pressured air of a turbine engine's whine; that she would like to take Noonan's place in 1937, co-pilot & disappear mysteriously between New Guinea & Howland Island; that Franklin will die in office -- a bull's-eye for the Cancer Man -- after breaking the "no 3rd term" tradition; that in 1992 a search party will find remnants of Earhart's plane in Kiribati. She promises to call: Amelia, it's me... She swears to dispute their claims. She will close that file, rejoin her in the area between Melbourne Fla., Bermuda, & Puerto Rico, where any number of planes have vanished & investigations to date have not produced any scientific evidence of unusual phenomena involved in any of those disappearances.