Bahn
Amelia Gorman
Working the angle in my head,
it looks like the devil’s triad sounds.
Five flights of stairs to the flat bottom,
A smooth subway ride where I never
never once looked up to the route map.
There’s that tritone again, the bell (jars),
through the glass, doors open, the wall
is red and the cars keep going. The stop
is named Rue and the advertisements
glow mean neon with calls to come buy,
come buy, come by, the wind blows back-
ward but the escalator shorted last week.
My calculations were right in volume,
left and right and endlessly forward
but not on time. It’s hell that you aren’t
here to meet me at the station.
Amelia Gorman is a recent transplant to Eureka, California where she enjoys exploring the tide pools and redwoods with her dogs and foster dogs. Read some of her recent poetry in Star*Line and Vastarien. Her first chapbook, Field Guide to Invasive Species of Minnesota is forthcoming from Interstellar Flight Press in 2021. Find her on twitter at @gorman_ghast.