Peter Magliocco

UNDER THE BRIDGE OF SIGHS

Over the Las Vegas Strip in summer
stretching above macadam autos
caught in traffic's torturous vise
metallic glints emblazon fully
the spectacle's frenzied movement
nearby the Fashion Show Mall turrets
a sudden figure is twisting between
airy currents of his shimmering
leap from the flying saucer roof
to crunch down sidewalk pavement
terra firma tourists file slowly by
remnants of deformed humanity
split into shiny crimson diffractions
cell phone pictures then capture
in myriad lenses a fleeting mirage
of a gambler's now eternal freedom
from their enslavement's neon trance.


Peter reads "Under the Bridge of Sighs":



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Peter confesses: "My poem is based on an actual event in Vegas when a man dropped to his suicidal death from the Fashion Show Mall recently. That area is tourist-packed during the day; I was struck by the image of their reaction when a man's plummeting body crashed between them."

PETER MAGLIOCCO writes from Las Vegas, Nevada, where he occasionally edits the lit-zine Art:Mag. He has forthcoming poetry in Harbinger Asylum, Midnight Lane Boutique, Poetry Pacific, Elsiesy and elsewhere. His speculative sci-fi novel The Burgher of Virtual Eden is now an ebook available at all the usual places.