Tara Dougans is the original on the left
and since this is a post about responses and appropriation,
here is prose written in 2008:
Hungry birds drag majestically behind the window,
Twenty-six floors above the city, and I watch them every night.
High rise, never loses the hours of footing, and the swan-like woman wifes herself to the edge of the plank. Up and down, hand in hand, they face each other. He bends at her brace, later even the stars howl in the voice of a turning moan, and at eight o'clock, the bowl of fruit is still
with such certainty, that the ritual of man is as strange as the legs of the animal who closes her eyes over in their graves of sky. Cavernous mouths close back with such force, open throws, and the woman leaves around midnight.
---WHICH! was taken from the ever clever Maxine Chernoff, Evolution of the Bridge, "High Rise" :
High Rise
The man next door has extended a long wooden plank out of his
window. Twenty-six floors above the city, I watch him every night.
With the certainty of a commuter train, he arrives at eight o'clock.
He always dresses in orange trunks and black flippers. A white
towel drags majestically behind him. He bends at the waist,
extends his long arms, swan-like, and springs up and down three
times. He never loses his footing.
Later in the evening, he and his wife enjoy a stroll to the edge of
the plank. Hand in hand they sit facing each other. Like
hungry birds they open their cavernous mouths and look straight
up at the sky. Often they sit there for hours, still as a bowl of fruit
on a table.
When the woman leaves around midnight, the man performs his
closing ritual. He braces himself with his legs, throws his head
back with such force that the plank moans. He closes his eyes and
howls once in the voice of a strange animal.
The stars turn over in their graves of sky.
