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Sycorax Takes the Train
The welded lumps of her feet ache
as she fights to keep her balance, her inch of distance,
in the hot, overstuffed belly of the subway car.
She wears black velvet gloves, even in summer,
to hide her matted palms and eleventh finger,
and they make clutching the chrome overhead bar damned difficult.
The days when a lady was offered a seat are over.
She tries to recall when it was
that she started to care about time.
Bodies press against her as the train stops,
deposits a trickle and admits a flood of human heat,
old and new exhaustion sweat, halitosis, sauerkraut,
the ripe musk of hurried, furtive lunchtime couplings.
She closes her eyes, wolf-keen nostrils twitching,
fighting waves of nausea from the smells and the
stories that crash against the breakers of her tired mind.
She remembers Ariel's mistral kiss,
a scirocco between her thighs.
She clutches the white paper bag from the drugstore,
afraid of losing it in the crush, her boy's necessaries,
his tooth-bleach, his Brylcreem, his Man-Tan.
Her boy has another date tonight, another Miranda
with long white limbs and uncorrupted eyes,
another poor stand-in for the one that got away,
another Miranda to feed to the furnace, piece by
piece.
Later, she'll hold him in her arms,
and they'll weep for lost lovers
all night until the sun makes him sleepy
and it's time for her to catch the train.
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