Dana Holley Maloney
poetry
Dana Holley Maloney is a native New Jerseyan who lives and writes in midcoast Maine. Her poems have been published or are forthcoming in Tar River Poetry, The Lake, Paterson Literary Review, and elsewhere. She teaches English at Montclair State University. More at danamaloney.com.
How the Rich Live
What part of me knew it was a tiny hummingbird
and not some other creature I’d caught
while crossing the Hudson with the windows down
mid-June? I’d left it trapped in the fume-filled
parking garage for hours while I toured the Upper
East Side, chatting in Starbucks but buying nothing.
Visiting Melissa’s new baby in a building called
The Impala where leaping African beasts, in bronze,
decorate the lobby, and a Caribbean doula sat watching
the Yankees game. Generally, I was seeing how
the rich live while the bird pressed persistently
against the dark lines of the rear defogger like some
musical note, or prisoner, its pale body too large
for a bee but buzzing, up and down the back window.
When I returned, its harmonic wings were horrifying
in their insistence as I drove up the ramp, turned right
on 79th, rolled down the windows, and swatted at it
with a newspaper. At some intersection on the Upper
West Side, I released it into the busy air. I could detect
no color but watched as it ascended, certain above drab
buildings and pedestrian life, rising. What relief when
I crossed back over the George Washington Bridge,
freed from what had weighed me down, the wind
blowing through my windows as if I were flying.
“ I started writing this poem more than 20 years ago, based on a real experience. I can vividly recall being in my Geo Prizm and rolling down the windows by hand. For a long time I grappled with how to end the poem. I just could not get it right. The last three and a half lines arrived relatively recently. I am making final touches on my first full-length collection, and many of the poems convey my deep attachment to the other side of the Hudson River, New Jersey, where I lived for most of my life. ”
