See Something, Say Something: Subway Stops and Goes

See Something, Say Something: Subway Stops and Goes
I
Subway platform catwalk
Hips sway with the confidence of so many polka dots against the monotony of New York.
Baby carriage percussion beats down the stairwells as the horn section erupts within each mini orchestra.
Waterlogged rats scratch their way into empty potato chip bags crumpled and discarded near the third rail.
The feeling of undercover lurid glances upon my ass is electrifying.
Just don’t mess this one up by turning around.
Let him come to you this time.
II
Country song reality,
Walking the city as a tumbleweed,
Losing cash and dignity as I spin down the avenues, careening into the streets only long enough to brush off some of the dirt that’s weighing me down.
I fall in love with the accents of Penn Station every day.
III
I am plucking at his torso as bass strings – an instrument I do not play, but I follow his freckles as chords.
My fingers have never felt so big.
They are eager.
In my eyes, he is a fava bean ready to be shucked.
I have blanched him with caress, and now remains only the supple skin between the green of us knowing the other.
At the thought of unveiling him, I spilt in two, only increasing the amount of surface area we have to cover.
On my lips there is a thin layer of honey, my skin itself a comb dripping with his essence.
I can smell the hydrangea and rhododendron tapped to produce this ardor on my face. My tongue languishes in the salt and sugar of our mouths pressed against each other in a vice of our own design.
IV
Wading through the fog of Harlem at four in the morning,
Sweater bespeckled with cigarette ash and Mexican rice,
My eyes lock on a beacon.
With cinder block feet and sloth lids, I magician myself to the streetlight spotlight outside my apartment door where my seat awaits.
Under the tertiary lighting of residents upstairs unable to sleep, watching so many infomercials and listening to hip hop songs of my youth to get to bed: here, I am sated.
My cacophony quiets only when I close my eyes and jukebox reveries start dropping as so many quarters from jackpot slots.
Mind of a woman, restless and strategizing.
I count on fingers, thumb first, to keep track of the meter.
V
Roller derby death march,
A pocket full of quince.
Treasure map of SoHo,
Street carts full of hints.
Mother on the subway refuses to put the brake on her daughter’s stroller.
She is picking at her nails as though she were in Alba foraging truffles.
She is truly a pig.
Daughter’s carriage bangs back and forth against the emergency door of the car, a pint-sized battering ram, chocolate chips flying behind her as so many splinters from a lumberjack’s thrust.
The ass of this woman as she exits the train reads like Braille, or tree trunk rings.
This girl was a mistake, and mom’s ass is a lazy, shapeless, sagging reminder of how futility manifests itself.
If desperation had a scent, it would be the shallow conversations of gay men in poorly fitting t-shirts on a damp Thursday in Hell’s Kitchen waiting to bump iPhones, if not something more.
VI
Rhinestone cowgirl saddles up to the bar at 4:30 P.M. in the afternoon.
She is 65, and goddamn it she is going to use it her advantage: Senior Citizen discount on Kentucky bourbon.
Maybe I do want to grow old …
When am I going to learn to open my mouth at the right time?
I flap my gums all day long, but never at the people I should.
This same gentleman has walked past me four times now, and I ostrich my head down every time as I were playing a game of hide and seek, party of one.
I’m hiding.
He’s done seeking.
But he was seeking, and I’m an idiot.
I want to wear him like a London Fog trenchcoat in Central Park in November.
My arms slide along his as butter on Pyrex.
We are baking a pumpkin pie with a bacon crust.
He fits like all the clothes I stole from my father: a little long, but well worn in and soft.