Subway Man

A Poem by Whiles

Brooklyn

On a dismal train
traveling noisily
from Hoyt-Schermerhorn to Lafayette,
a man with piss on his clothes and beer on his breath
lurches charmingly toward me

the skinny and smiling and paper-brown man
sits down with his thigh
pressed against mine and studies me
with rheumy eyes

life is getting me down
he says and I nodded, knowing
I�ve needed others,
always,
to give me some relief
and now I smelled it coming:
anonymous release

Life is hard he said
you bust your a*s at work and then you
get home to some ball bustin�
from the woman-you-love
I nod as middle-aged merchant�s wives
sidle slowly away from the pair of us
and our troubled talk
You�re too pretty to have a hard life
he says

That's how it is I say
and he doesn't tell me
I'm too young to know
he would be wrong
and then
he holds out a skeleton arm
wrapped in sinew and street dust
and I shake his hand and leave
the holy place