FALL 2011/WINTER 2012

POETRY

The Lady with 35 Balloons by Sam Hamod

there she was with 35 balloons

walking down South Street

in Newark, New Jersey, wind

blowing, balloons flying about

in all kinds of crazy patterns, her

hair, blonde against the evening’s blue,

her tight white blouse switching back and forth,

her legs pumping up the hill,

the girls in the radio station, playing jazz

asking for donations, noticed her,

wondered why the 35 balloons---as for me,

I wondered as well, I imagined it was

her birthday, and she wanted to celebrate it

but there was no one home, no surprise party

waiting for her when she got there, no calls,

so she decided she’d take her balloons out  for a walk,

and that’s when it happened, the wind

felt sorry for her, he knew what it was like

to be abandoned, or to be scorned, so

as quickly as you can say Jack Robinson,

he swooped down, grabbed her surprised self,

pulled her to himself, and took her into the sky,

way up, above the old church steeples, way

past the docks, way up so that she

could see the man in the moon 

more clearly than ever in her life, not

wincing at all, she held on to wind, clutching

his tailwind, feeling giddy

no one would believe this

not in the office, nor her folks, nor her cousins,

no one in the newspapers or TV stations, but

who cared whether they believed her or not

she held on to her balloons, as if in a dream,

then the took her through Hillside, Union,

Westfield, down Highway 1 through New Brunswick,

the Kendall Park, then suddenly he had an idea,

he heard the music at a distance,  the jazz festival,

so there they went, and just as the band

was hitting it hard with April in Paris, wind

let go, and she flew through the air,

her balloons like parachutes,

then she landed,

PLOP!!!

right in the middle of the band, oh

the trumpets moved out of the way, trombones

nudged her with their slides, her ears throbbed

from the drums, but she got up,

heard the light    touch of the piano,

straightened out her skirt, brushed back

her hair, made sure her blouse was buttoned,

then walked right through the crowd, she

and her balloons, without a care, the happiest

birthday she’d ever had

c: sam hamod, 9.15.11