Chiaroscuro Choreography

A light mist of ethereous rain falls silent on his thin, sharp-angled face. He lengthens his stride and leans toward the wind. He walks through plundered poverty; crumbled by the weight of exodus. Abandoned to the blood-rough nails scratching on the concrete diasporas of multiethnic history. Past the playground echoes of PS #59, as they drift along the faded asphalt haze of time. Echoes still ring true with elemental bones of hope: the children break out and through gunmetal gray, graffiti covered doors, outside to the saturated heat of inner-city rage. Past gothic orthodox cathedral mausoleums which sit like ancient stoics and stare through burnt-amber, azure, crystalline-blue stained glass eyes; focused out with a kernel of eternal mustard seed hope: souls will come again and warm the sacred pews. Past the Puerto Rican market where the pig's head led the carnivore parade of mastication promise every day. A meat-market window of letted-blood and death reminiscent of Amsterdam whores with their wares on display for the dead-eyed stares of the men outside. He comes to the dust and grime of an empty lot covered by old and broken concrete slabs. He stops and lets his mind drift back to watch a woman who wears a ratted fox-tail wrap around her neck. She holds a long, un-filtered cigarette, loose, between her two bright, fuchsia painted lips. She wears a black velvet hat with veil to her nose and a straight black dress that flows below her knees, mid-calf, above her shiny black, high-heel, patent leather shoes. He can almost see through the blur of a chiaroscuro choreography his mother, visiting with the Kazakhstan neighbors, in this dreamlike memory. The multi-plexed, subsidized project, where he was born, once stood just beyond his vision of a mother's visit in high-heel, indigo, tangerine, sibilant sounds; lit with electric light smiles of denial. She would hold her cigarette between fuchsia lips and wear that ratted fox-tail wrap until the cancer cough began to spew Chesterfield blood on the molted fox-tail head of her beloved fur. Then she went to bed. Went to sleep. And died. Pigeons cooed quietly on that New York City night.