The last car’s backward look
keyholes my underworld,
the tunnel’s dashing lights
and disenchanted time,
the drains, the rats. I rode
Philadelphia’s subway
Olney to Oregon;
San Francisco’s N-Judah
ballpark to Ocean Beach;
Boston’s shrill “T”
to Wonderland; the “L”
rolled me past Chicago’s
three-flats, beige kitchens,
shades, household secrets
rubbed against my passing;
and New York’s tough B train
to Brighton Beach’s Stoli
and piroshki. I name them
to love them even more.
Arid platforms glow
a goblin green or sickly
sooty white, the stages
of desire, fatigue, alarm.
Time runs through us, heedless:
I’ve studied, slept, been drunk,
sick, vertigoed, lost
and unfound, enthralled encased.
I tell my boisterous angels,
don’t bear me home, anywhere
but there, take me cool or hot
into the known nothing,
breathe with me, thrill my feet,
bear with me the fat,
the lame, the loudmouths, the unloved
lovers sobbing, that mother
changing a shitty diaper,
hounds under seats, the ads,
the inflated shoes, limp socks,
the happy Halloween zombies
and staggering glamor-pusses,
the boas flounces garters
pixie-dust tresses aroused,
too many stories sleeked,
trapped, evaporating,
windows, siding, wheels
with a mind of their own.
—W. S. Di Piero
Simone Di Piero’s recent books are The Complaints (poems) and Fat: New and Uncollected Prose. He lives in San Francisco.
