And Falling

On New Year’s Eve I sit in a hotel bed
with my dad, who’s taken me
on visitation this week,
watching stuntman Robbie Maddison,
all decked out in Red Bull blue,
attempt to jump his motorbike up a ramp
and onto a ten-story building. He has to hit
sixty-six miles per hour, that’s his number
to clear the lip but not sail over,
so he revs down the runway to get it right.
Then back to the start, thumbs up,
hard down the lane
to the ramp then up then

on the roof, breathing
in his leather.             Still
has to get down, a free-fall
to the ramp. He doesn’t
want to be here. He has to
be brave. Courage is not
fighting back but opening up
to gravity. Wormhole of stasis,
no track, no dad, no
time moving, no year gone
or coming. Robbie


mid-air again  and falling
there on the night’s back free

then on his ramp. A crewman:
You’re the fucking man, Robbie Maddison. He rests
his helmeted head on his handlebars.
Surrounded. He gives his gloved hand
                to the medics—
impact stress fracture, the announcer says.

Robbie, how much was practice
and how much was living
ready to die whenever,
even hoping to die
somewhere everyone sees?
Sixty-six isn’t your number—
it’s theirs, the crowd scarf-huddled,
holding their foggy breath
for a throttle crank of god-life
to ignite their numb bodies
into another year of pain.

T. Dallas Saylor is a PhD student in poetry at Florida State University, and he holds an MFA from the University of Houston. His work often meditates on the body, especially gender and sexuality, against physical, spiritual, and digital landscapes.