Evening Train

What do I know for sure? Only this sliding 
along the same uneven plane, passing the same 
few stations, the revolving door of people.
The polyurethane seats are dizzying and bright, 
the colors of cafeteria condiments, the poles 
covered in the fingerprints of passengers long 
departed. With a whoosh, the train is
extruded into the station like a bullet 
through a muzzle. Train after train emerges 
this way. Yet something changes, or gives.
Beside me, two teenagers share a Pepsi, laughing. 
What momentum their lives have,
every moment contiguous,
the rooftops they laze upon like gods, linking 
Saturday to Saturday.
See them there—
passing a spliff, talking in hyperbole. 
To be so young but feel so old.
I’ll never be young again. 
This is hyperbole too.

In a plastic tub in Chinatown,
red-eared turtles glide from one end
to the other. A man shouts Glory, glory, glory 
as he shambles down Broadway. Faces swarm 
the windows of the Macy’s display.
They are the undimmed faces of children, 
walking past with last week’s allowance 
jangling in their pocket.
Who among them will grow addicted to 
the bad kind of love. Who will die
too soon, standing in the front yard 
with his father’s pistol in his hands.
When their parents call them, the children turn 
and hurry forth, into April’s bloom.
It is the half-dark entranceway of adulthood 
toward which they run—
into futures that have already begun 
to draw closed around them.
Glory, glory, glory.
Watch now as their breath, its circle, 
lifts like a kiss from the glass.

Read more from Issue 20.2.