Walking the track, no, flying by Carolyn Srygley-Moore

you know, it’s been said before. but it was that, like that — molting rhinoceros horns, albino dragons. a man tilts before me on the railroad, shirt red as the boxcar: propels his hands like airline wings, like feather dusters, like the hands of a woman toppling, nearly, catching grit of God in her palms. i saw her on 29th, down by the river where they found that girl’s body, a girl nearly my age: you look like you’re flying, i said, i am, she said, just found out i don’t have cancer. that’s how it goes. toss aside the worn metaphor, wear the white sneakers Alex’s anthropologist father wore the day he died, & dance, grimace covered by the aboriginal mask, mouth ajar as the door without hinges, the pink door, no door, a plank of molecules slipping.