by Taylor Altman

It's #tbt! Enjoy this great one from SWWIM Every Day's archives!

______________________________________________________________________

Past Skokie lawns flat as cemeteries
and airport buildings passing the sherbet colors of evening 
down Harms Road, past the College Prep Academy, a group of boys  

hacks through June’s first greenery 
dreaming of the city on the other side, Lake Michigan’s 
icy cut, mafiosos trailing blue Fibonacci spirals of smoke  

from speakeasies and casinos. They don’t know 
that other city, the ghost city beneath the lake, zoned 
within its loneliness like a boy on the last day  

of his childhood, turning inward to a shore unknown 
to his father and brothers, the sheer blue panels 
of a Calder mobile. The lake is full of stories, voices  

and stories, boys stripped naked to the waist 
and flayed by poison ivy, boys becoming 
trees, becoming air, the circus of clouds moving silently  

across the Plains suffused with light 
from a distant star and floating back to earth, becoming the men 
who work the great belching factories of Detroit  

and Kenosha, expressions forged in steel, who press the levers 
and pistons resounding in the vast cathedral 
of work, holiest of names unspoken, the evening clouds  

piling one atop the other, concatenating 
like stories, twisting, funneling, each more intricate 
than the last, bone-delicate and pale, sifted from the throats  

of boys who float chained to one another 
and the shore, a line of empty boats rocking end to end 
in the fathomless kingdom of night.

______________________________________________________________________

Taylor Altman is an attorney and writer based in Las Vegas, NV. She holds a BA from Stanford University, an MFA from Boston University, and a JD from the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law. 

by Taylor Altman

Past Skokie lawns flat as cemeteries

and airport buildings passing the sherbet colors of evening

down Harms Road, past the College Prep Academy, a group of boys

hacks through June’s first greenery

dreaming of the city on the other side, Lake Michigan’s

icy cut, mafiosos trailing blue Fibonacci spirals of smoke

from speakeasies and casinos. They don’t know

that other city, the ghost city beneath the lake, zoned

within its loneliness like a boy on the last day

of his childhood, turning inward to a shore unknown

to his father and brothers, the sheer blue panels

of a Calder mobile. The lake is full of stories, voices

and stories, boys stripped naked to the waist

and flayed by poison ivy, boys becoming trees, becoming

air, the circus of clouds moving silently

across the Plains suffused with light

from a distant star and floating back to earth, becoming the men

who work the great belching factories of Detroit

and Kenosha, expressions forged in steel, who press the levers

and pistons resounding in the vast cathedral

of work, holiest of names unspoken, the evening clouds

piling one atop the other, concatenating

like stories, twisting, funneling, each more intricate

than the last, bone-delicate and pale, sifted from the throats

of boys who float chained to one another

and the shore, a line of empty boats rocking end to end

in the fathomless kingdom of night.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Taylor Altman is an attorney in San Francisco. She holds a BA from Stanford University, an MFA in creative writing from Boston University, and a JD from Berkeley Law School. Prior to law school, she worked at an educational non-profit organization and taught English at a community college. Her work, twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize, has appeared in journals such as Blackbird, Notre Dame Review, and Salamander. Her first collection of poems, Swimming Back, was published in 2008.