Museum Of The City Of... Poem by Morgan Michaels

It beats Keats for frozen motion-
this gelatin-silver 8 by 12 glossy
from nineteen seventy eight or seventy nine
(ancient history in American time-
why, James Schuyler was alive and living at the Chelsea!) ,
of frogmen dropt from a low-hovering chopper
down into a stream of turgid riverwater
two, just off, suspended giddily in mid-air,
fuselage portals yawning wide behind,
one on either side, neatly clearing the skids,
like dancers in an aerial dance,
or human hieroglyphs
eternally outspread-while a third,
sleek noggin bobs below, already down in the drink,
(this, not, mind you, being the sea,
since off on the distant, further shore repines
the faint exosketeton of Queens;
and there where the isle of Manhattan nearest draws
it's Queenly Abydos-the ghostly tracery of
the Hellsgate.

Behind their...