The neighbors complain about the noise,
so I tell my wife Let’s screw hooks into the ceiling;
we run a series of weights & pulleys throughout our apartment
as our lighter-than-air bodies are propelled between rooms
& our dangling feet flee from the floor, our footsteps now imaginary
& pertaining to a terrestrial past
negated by this tendency towards inaudible motion:
No pins are dropped; no cutlery clanks against hardwood planks;
no glasses shatter into a Jackson Pollack-like canvas of shards;
but our neighbors insist with the banging of their broomsticks,
protesting against our remembered racket;
& so we respond with an arsenal of soundless pirouettes,
a concerted symphony of winks & nudges
& kisses blown across our parabola-laden ceiling,
our tangled spider-web of wires from which we hang.
We’ve won without winning, having lost the lives we led
in favor of this restaged rendition of a Peter Pan-less Peter Pan,
yet we reign over our midair kingdom; & years later,
when our sound-challenged neighbors
have left the sphere of the living, it’s too late for us to change:
Our choreographed flights are now second-nature,
& our aged dog’s accustomed to this geography of clouds,
our open windows leading out into the grand expanse
of a connected construction, a latticework of towers, blimps, & satellites,
the sky no longer the limit & the world irretrievably beneath us.
Jonathan Greenhause received a 2014 Willow Review Award and was a finalist or honorable mention in 2014’s poetry contests from Naugatuck River Review, New Millennium Writings, Red Hen Press, River Styx, and Peregrine. His website is www.jonathangreenhause.com.