On the Subway for the First Time
The train is a creature that moves like water.
It has no eyes, only a sharp
mouth that closes on those too slow.
All around is accident. All around is climb
and slip and fall and that current below could
kill you but you’re riding now so the car
is a dragon and the rail is a bolt of lightning; a storm
under its wings and you on its back.
Or the car is a wave and the rail, its tide and you
are Jesus walking on blue salt.
Jesus was very like a disabled woman.
You know body as miracle.
You know the gorging eyes of onlookers
who want to make your body miracle
when it wants only holding.
So many people have called you inspiration
like it was your name, you forget
you can inspire yourself.
Your tongue, brain, heart
can each be organs of praise.
Your crutches are not ugly. They held fast
through clinging litter and someone’s urine.
Your hamstrings, so many times cut
open, took on four flights of stairs.
No one cares that the elevator in this station
hasn’t worked in six months.
No one cares enough to give you a seat.
Praise, even, the anonymity in how they turn
their faces away. Because your feet
have never been fast but were faultless
enough to carry you over that gap
that holds all your terror
before those doors closed.
They will carry you up until the sun hits your face and on
into a room where people wait for you.
Only you can know the work it took to stand
here making this boring, transitory bullet your altar.
That work is worth singing about.
You stand, your knees a shaking shout.by Liv Mammone
from Split This Rock