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disclaimer says its early

hours, I don't mind speaking to

a chilly youth of the dangerous age

early on a fall night

Transit Authority

I.  Subway Station:  Brooklyn

Snow and rain that soaked through

Flatbush Avenue all week

plop from the underground ceiling.

Men who like sex admire my purple

pants.  They think they mean less than they mean.

Here, I'll sit you at a certain angle

to what I see, catch the light

right, and introduce you to

the balancing act that invests these platforms.

II.  Saturday Afternoon in the Galleries

i.  Bergen Street Station:  Young Rat

She was furrier than mice

I've seen, of a good steel gray;

she moved between and under

tracks, past black puddles

and an orange rind, ignoring

people on the platform, who didn't

want to witness her business.

She hurried slightly when the rumble

started, but appeared calm

after the G train passed over

keeping to its predictable path,

no menace to the knowing.

ii.  Soho

    The stairs to the Blue

Mountain, Prince Street, and Bowery

Galleries are mended with metal

                sheets stamped in

patterns.  A handful of flyers

waits alone where the staircase

                 turns, ascending

to the assault of art, painters

grabbing vision and hauling it

                  their way.

But soothing monied galleries

Are near, to smooth coercion

                 out of my eyes:

in two of them I recover

enough to swing through the flea market.

iii.  Return by the R

Pacific Street Station, scarred

by repairs, where a young girl

smirks with derision when I strike

for a barred-off staircase up,

is an appendage now of Atlantic

Avenue Station, where they crowd

through networks of connecting tunnels

past police to important trains.

But just to my right at the exit

to Pacific Street the Church

of the Redeemer is portrayed in tile

a little above eye level.

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