City Jump

Black girls mollycoddle, dandle cranky babies; some cradled on arm and hip, some hustled along on low-riding wheels. Brown men lounge outside bodega’s, some soft-soap, play imaginary guitars, some flash smiles at the slackening sun, dare it to glitz elsewhere. White girls sit on the steep stoops bare knees out and breezing, smoke with dreamy eyes, pass comments that time-bomb tick. From high wires pigeons rubberneck like parakeets. Thin city winds dodge washing lines. Blouses and dresses grip their hamstrung trapezes. Black backyard mechanics lean over engine blocks, imagine curvy garbs air-dancing, blown outward from street grates slow billowed from vents. The brownstones take a knee, sweat breaks over rooftops. A scurry of hands snatch rumbling city transports that beep ways to late shifts. Those that ply less punched-out trades slip into hankering gaps, alleys, half-way loitering’s that flicker into sight juiced by the scatter and clatter of pigeon wings.