After we stepped from the jet’s cockpit with its menagerie

of dials and switches,

we linked hands

in a line

of little candy puffs of blue,

beige, and red—

along Idlewild’s

Pan Am terminal,

where disembodied

voices roiled

and tumbled

like helpless

invisible clothes

in a huge, cold

machine.

But it’s the body I remember most, twisted in a blood splat

at the bottom of an escalator,

where a woman in a yellow summer dress

screamed like Ann Darrow

at the sight of Kong.

A man in a gray jacket, black tie

and black-framed glasses

ditched his briefcase and jumped—

Clark Kent

trying to hug

a polished floor.

Miss Kennedy, like a clean hen

in a lilac dress, corralled us under

her wing, pulled us away

from the star-shaped suicide.

But it was just a television show to me, without commercials.

Lenny DellaRocca is the founder and co-publisher of South Florida Poetry Journal. His work has appeared in print and online since 1980.