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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
SUBWAY, by MARY HIGH GLADDING
First Line: She wore three bracelets that had once had stones
Last Line: Too blunt to kill.
Subject(s): Humanity; Subways
First Line: She wore three bracelets that had once had stones
Last Line: Too blunt to kill.
Subject(s): Humanity; Subways
She wore three bracelets that had once had stones
twinkling hotly—
red stars in celluloid—
now partly gone to limbo
and the rest
sullen at being left—expected even
to flash
against a background of a bargain basement's tawdriness.
A green tail feather drooping ... drooping ...
unable to stand perkily and proud
above the moon that had been crescented
in Ireland—
full-grown—rounded—a pudding with a pair of eyes
like sapphire plums.
Run-over heels ... frayed cuffs ...
The snob that lords it over Appian Ways
of modern Rome—his rubber heels
bearing his majesty up this aisle—down that—
amidst the serried counters of the Five and Ten.
Powder puffs ... fingers with pointed nails
brittled like claws—slapping on powder
to buried noses—ghastly peaks
that rear their whiteness like grotesque tombstones
from out a sallow plot.
Gum-chewers ... morons ...
Toughness and simpering sillies that expect
a pick-up to be interested
in them—alone!
In and out ... stations ... stations ...
shifting ... shifting ...
yet
ever en masse the same—
humanity
leveled off like a brimming measure
with the back of a case-knife—
too blunt to kill.
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