Flying Down the Five

^{after Gala Mukomolova’s “On the Brighton Beach Boardwalk”}

Families roll on toward summer, its feral freedom, ocean waves 

beckon every sibling like schools of skipjack leaping together to  

catch the sun on their silver scales. Bundles of beach umbrellas  

waiting to be raised high & planted for their temporary kingdoms.  

Trucks bobbing with oranges, station wagons bouncing with  

babies in the back. Lovers fight in the red gleam of a rover or  

swerve in the sweat of a frolick behind the wheel. A highway  

stretch of to & fro, bodies raucous & guzzling. So many dreams  

leaking from gas tanks, the oil drip of wasted want. A congested  

uproar of miles in waiting. So many exits missed.  What-could-

have-beens, just beyond the turnpike. Dead ends. Concrete &

unmoving.  

My aunt, a tree cutting herself down & me with, turns to me from  

the front seat, says, some of us didn’t get the looks in the family, right?

You know how it is. My silence hits the lane markers, all we hear is  

bumpbumpbump. All I hear is my tías telling each other, you are  

beautiful, mija, but wear a hat so you don’t get too dark. All I hear is a  

world saying brownbrownbrown a little too much & I am furiously  

stuffing my mouth with plantain chips crunching centuries  

between my teeth, my lungs a bouquet catching a windfall of  

particles unseen. So much ugly 

I tug on my seatbelt to breathe a little easier, flicking all the dead  

ends off me. A cement barrier, the road of my throat. No one says  

anything, the words filling the car like murky green lake water after  

a tumble off the road. I imagine the doors stuck in the pressure of  

the plunge, my drowned body floating to the surface not pretty  

enough to salvage & burn. I spread to the shoals, a seasoned meal  

in undertow, delicious, at least, to the fish. I am the fish, feral &  

flying.  

But I am flopped against the window, a pane dusty with estival  

judgment. I roll it down, gills gasping for air, my face a drum of  

highway breath, the 65 mph hot wind on my cheek reminding me  

I am a body on an irreplaceable planet. Don’t take everything so  

seriously, I hear. Roll the window up, dear, it really is too loud.