--- F R A N K   M A T A G R A N O

No one in the waiting room
saw what happened, an eight year old
near the elevator bank
caught a glimpse,
shouting, "Mommy, an angel,"
barged past the nurses' desk,
past a walker
folded and propped
against the wall.
With eight wings he rushed
down the hall,
the boy counted eight,
I counted twenty four months
and ten trips from E104th and 2nd --
grandma's legs bent odd in the bucket seat,
wheelchair packed in the trunk --
to the Evergreen Salon in Bergenfield
when hair was still there to dye. I call it "pretty,"     
how everything, just everything, reduced
itself to that one event:
jaw pried, mouth
wide, black,
the clean arm
of an at-will angel,
white sleeve rolled,
fist rammed
down her cancerous throat.