Mermaid Street
What love commands, the iron serpent obeys:
6:30 punches through the tunnel, a steel pulse driving toward Coney Island,
where lime-green Ubers crouch at the curb, breathing silver into the air,
and brief Urdu greetings strike matches in the blue mouth of morning.
Pakistan hangs above Mermaid Street, an electric-green moon.
“Where to, mama? Where to? Two dollars,” the cabbies cast their daily net.
The same bright bargain, a coin polished thin by repetition.
“Whether you’re a morning person or a night owl, we all start our day at some point. And we all seem to start it differently.” —Kevan Lee
At 5:40, the shower beats a wake-up hymn on my shoulders; I dress inside the last pocket of night and slip out before six.
The garbage bag is a cold-toothed animal in my hand as I cross three frozen minutes to the subway,
where what love commands, the rattling serpent obeys, praying open
the locked fist of morning depression until noon. Am I the passenger, or the cargo?
Why was I born? Why am I a question mark beneath these buzzing lights? On whose scale is my worth weighed?
The ancient question boards beside me, a silent fare: who will remember me when I am gone?
The train’s steel jaws? The cabbies guarding the curb? Would the pavement keep the ghost of my dragging feet?
Is such self-scrutiny worth a New York minute—the red hand a wound, traffic a river—while I stand on the curb of myself, asking who will miss us, really?
Void after void, each dark window and open mouth swallowing my reflection.
Perhaps the few who remember me would feel a missing tooth in the machinery of their days:
For the sake of remembering me, for the empty seat becoming a small grave, for the car fare cooling in a pocket,
for the monthly fees that would knock on a door no one opens—and T-Mobile,
You would finally cut my name loose from the family tree of that grandfathered plan.
Today I sat in a room where silence has erased the walls, hearing only
keys sowing rain across the page, my heart knocking from its cage, the mouse—click, click.
To be remembered: perhaps a poet is a lantern lowered into the vanished world, bringing back enough fire to make an audience believe the dark once had a name.
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