By Tony Hoagland

They hang a big tube from the side of an office building
and through this esophagus the size
of an elevator shaft
 
they throw down furniture and
wire, chunks of plaster, ceiling tile and glass
shag carpet track lighting
 
swivel chairs and lathe
crash and bashing into giant bins five floors below
boing and banging down and this goes on for seven days.
 
I may be a grown man but that doesn't mean
I don't enjoy
the ingenuities of violence against matter
 
which means I stand across the street with all the others guys
--wheelchair vet and hot dog vendor,
junior attorney and the retiree--
in a little cluster of hypnotized testosterone.
 
I too am made of joists and stanchions,
of plasterboard and temperamental steel,
mortgage payments and severed index fingers,
ex-girlfriends, and secret koolade-flavored dawns.
 
We gaze at the destruction and linger
the way a woman might stare
at a too-expensive dress
in a big store window,
 
the way that moonlight looks at
an island in the middle of the sea--
 
island unnamed, and unashamed,
touched by the tide.