Author's Reading (requires RealPlayer)

The 14th St. subway is a stiff
of chill and sorrow,
or is it the rush of change
that comes with the red train

A girl whose name no
one knows trips upstairs
Under the city a million
consciousnesses doze
uncharted
Forgotten already are the
comments overheard today
They flirt and disappear into
a back room
kiss and vanish
I'm leaking, spilling into a beautiful
fluid tunnel of midweek

The comet of today is
passed never to swing
back this
way again till we are
dead or really never at all

Tilting the carriage no
one helps her carry that baby

I was told that song is
reality by your sonnet
but who could argue with that?
As real as a tulip, a tunnel,
a thickness, a purse.
I will preside over this
reality until my fingers are numb
or until it's done

Heavy man with giant
box of unisex
diapers on his lap seems
to be sleeping
seems to be sure that
he is not waking

The sensation of an epoch
felt underground
Rub the texture under time's leaf
One's sense of one's own era
always a bead of mercury shooting out

"Stand clear the closing doors"
but the doors are always sliding
open exactly as often as they close
It's always hopeless
isn't it? to find everything closing,
or half shut

To start over with the knowledge that
drift is drift, forever

(originally published in Ribot, Fall 1998)