Francine Rubin: "Subway Poems"

Subway Message
                    Downtown Crossing Station, Boston, 7:30am

In the decrepit tunnel
filled with rusting metal,
waning electric light,
caution tape, I hear it
three times
from three mouths
to three different bodies:
"I love you"
“I love you”
“I love you”
 
These strangers’ love:
I bathe in it.

---

Orchestra
                    Downtown Crossing Station, Boston, 8:30am
 
Fingers strumming 
lips, palm slapping
mouth oscillating 
between O and <>,
the man's skeletal
arms moving
from his face to the air, 
conducting himself
and the trains' vibrations.

---

Subway Seat
                    Red Line to Alewife Station, Cambridge, 7:30pm
 
A 15 pound bag of Nishiki Rice
sits as if it were 
an egg or a small child,
recumbent but alert.

A young man 
holding a grocery bag 
stands facing it, 
watching.

---

These three subway poems appear in Francine Rubin's forthcoming chapbook If You're Talking to Me: Commuter Poems, which will be published by Dancing Girl Press in the spring of 2019. Francine is also the author of the chapbooks City Songs (Blue Lyra Press) and Geometries (Finishing Line Press). She is online at francinerubin.tumblr.com.