Subway Poems

What a fine almost civic justification, emptying language absolutely and filling it absolutely, thus making a straw tongue to allow the void to take over and then break the camel's back, gaping and singing, alternatively or at once, if you can imagine a heavy dinner leaving your guts empty. The apologies pronounced by a homeless newspaper vendor easily outpace the narrowness of my thought. By shrinking my head a little into my shoulders, I let that repetitive downpour of reality pass by. But the next line has problems shaking itself dry. It's probably soaking things up instead. [End Page 65] If, in poetry, language looks rhythm in the eye, the steps of the staircase cut out according to rules, the apologies of the newspaper vendor or the headlines of the evening press exist, but are in practical terms overwhelmed by the diapason of the poem, a shared reason for going

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• Metropoems

  Open Access•Garance Maréchal, Stephen Linstead•Qualitative Inquiry•2010

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