Kissed By - Excerpt

all kinds of people on the Q train

rattling horizontal in the subway car, one gazes one dozes another drifts off, but the junkie always nods. nods on the subway nods in the waiting room nods at the wheel of the car, and nods at home with the television up too loud to think while a child pulls at her sleeve, mommy wake up, i'm hungry. but it's always a waiting room wherever she is, and she's always nodding. off.

we rattling along we know the nods. it's not a nap.

the camel coat on my right elbows the high heels to his right silently to say, look at the child. the child breathes on the window blacked by the racing headlong flashlight tunnel walls and draws an O in the greasy condensation of her breath.

some like it nap some like it nod. the child turns to her mother slumping like some cilium in a lung, turns away, and says to the graffiti above her head, let's pretend we're in a spaceship.

we know, honey, we've nodded too or seen it done a hundred thousand million times ourselves. several bags across the aisle leans over asking, is your mother sick. no she's not sick, she's tired, says the child, says it first to several bags, and then says to the X crossed on the pentimentoed O, and she's not my mother. train ch-ch ch-ch.

cilia protect inside from germs by waving them away, by waving wave-like, and also usher eggs down fallopian tubes, beating, beating rhythmic-like. cilia sleep when the poison hits, and later on they die.

we woke us up, we'd wake you up, we red-haired, ham-handed, head-setted, barging on barging off, brief-cased, and even we begging passengers, but before that, at least one of we was nodding just like you were dropping through unmemory of heavy-headed years.

the child looks at AVISO, what to do for help, says to the ad for quitting, let's pretend the train's on fire.

the train IS on fire - honey, we're here to say so. the car explodes into daylight east off canal street, tube without a tube the sun scream whistles, the chorus gets up, beats our drums and waves our arms, our flagella flailing:

shake off the junk. shock-shock your cilia into consciousness. cilia: jump back up junk off. see with your ear to the ground the subway underneath it see the cars crash out of the tunnel. under our asses the rattling rails rise over chinatown four five six seven stories high. get off your ass. rise above bazaar below. cilia: unbend. cilia: see the beautiful raggedy-ass subway cars holding iron hands and hurtling single file over the neighboring rails back at us westward over the bridge from brooklyn. cilia: see the characters down there prattling in the morning air singing to the people: food, food, food, and jewels, and reasons to come buy and reasons to come off the junk, and cilia: smell the iron smell the dumplings and kumquats rampling down below, and cilia: see the tugboats on the river and the red lights at the tops of cranes to warn the planes and at the piers to warn the boats. come unhigh. naps and braids and snapping gum and golden chains and shiny heads are drifting, gazing, dozing, while all we open eyes are pulling for the tugboat, singing: shake your junky cilia. junky: you: get up and dance. throw off the clotted i can't get off it.

only junkies nod. it's not a nap, we shriek and sway. snap out of it.

well we might wave, but you're the arm she pulls on when she's hungry, and if you'd only lift your head you'd have fed her even in the tunnels out of which we came and into which we now go hurtling bridge gone by light change to green to yellow red to warn the trains to station stop and go and hurry mommy isn't this our stop. shouldn't we get off here mommy isn't this our--