City of Wind

We blew up chicken gullets, like balloons
for the girls to carry around on strings,
and played pirate with sharpened stockyard
bones which we sheathed in our clothesline
belts, like swords, marauding through the
neighborhood.
Along the sidewalks, the girls played hopscotch,
arms raised in the air like wings, hopping toward
the Blue Sky with tiny, one-footed leaps.
Angels flew in the city of wind, around the steeples
of the churches, over the rooftops of the tenements,
under the viaducts and bridges, through the gangways
of the houses, down the narrow streets and alleys,
above the fuming slaughterhouse chimneys
billowing black smoke into the wind.