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fall 2003 | The Culture Issue

The Elevated

Amy E. Shaw

All alone on the elevated subway platform
A Brooklyn-bound breeze across the right side of my face
Rain falls at a slant darkening the tracks and wooden ties
The green signal light is steady but nothing comes.

Then, phantomlike, two eyes appear
Far down the horizon of steel
The M train approaches smaller than my pinkie nail
Now the size of my thumb, my wrist, my thigh
A loud, shiny caterpillar
Coming to eat me.

The train crosses, canceling the light from the sky
It wails to a stop and the doors draw open
I am the only one boarding at this stop.
Inside there are nine other passengers
Including the copper-colored moon-faced baby in the stroller
We are quiet and damp and generously spaced

The joints between the cars squeak and complain
As the ancient train resigns itself toward the Williamsburg Bridge
Lurching at every bend and brake.
The long oblong windows
Etched with tags and rain
Are fogged, rendering Richter-like the motion picture view of the borough
Its shiny wet streets, busted up cars, curious storefronts
And occasional peeks through the windows of close-set tenement apartments.

An empty plastic Sunkist bottle rolls feverishly back and forth
Across the grubby linoleum at the front
Helplessly searching for a place to stick and be still.
When the train doors open at the Lorimer stop
A Latina mother seizes it and pitches it into the tracks
Ends the misery.

Up on the bridge now.
There are no noises besides those of the wheels on the tracks.
No one speaks.
Even the Polish pages of the jacketed man’s newspaper
Seem mute of their rustling.
A city of eight million

And here I am with a whole long gray bench to myself,
An insulated chamois shirt snapped all the way up,
And I do not want to budge.