Breadcrumb #373

RAX KING

A lady tells me, wake me at 42nd Street.
Colonial column of a lady, and was she fine!
Was she lovely! The gathering of age
in rivulets of wrinkle, hair silvering thin itself.

I think, it has been years since I was anything
a stranger might call fine. It warms my guts:
to be un-fine. Greasy and grimy, even fresh
from the bath. Like a rock a worm calls home.

I let the train pass 42nd Street before I wake her just to see
how haughty she will snip at me, but she shrugs,
her back as straight in sleep as a shaker chair,
snaps her eyes back shut like a crocodile’s.

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