Times Square Mosaic by Elizabeth Hoover

Walking, by Saul Leiter, 1956.

 
Times Square Mosaic
 
Gather without collecting a moment of this city:
Two women—long friends—may link arms, set out
when the sun is bright, tan coats jaunty
snapping in the breeze without doubt.
Their hair is gathered in clips sporting
fake flowers, bright red and big as a fist.
They are off to spend the day shopping, 
their multi-colored bags stuffed with gifts.
 
Not here—here they shimmer, their fragments
scattered like dropped coins in the rectangles
of a cheap chandelier swaying by a vent
in a window display, reflections jumbled.
 
My camera—quick—a dusty red blossom flees
or a wound blossoms. Only the lens sees.

Elizabeth Hoover

Elizabeth Hoover is a feminist poet who enjoys working on projects with a conceptual or research element. Her current project, Some Poems About Pictures  is a hybrid text that offers art as a space for resistance to and transformation of dominant gender narratives. A portion of that project was awarded the 2015 StoryQuarterly essay prize, judged by Maggie Nelson. Her poetry has appeared in [Pank], The Los Angeles Review, and The Pinch, among others. She is a freelance book critic and lives in Pittsburgh . You can see more of her work at ehooverink.com.