I’m smoking an emotional cigarette 
after the orgasmic reading of 
that last poem, a subway poem
and all the life and music and NYC beat
swirling around cold concrete and stairs 
of going in either direction.

The movement the music the ghosts, the ever-present
present the now the footsteps the 
coming from and the destination, a city beneath
a city built on a history informing everyone’s now.

Weekdays workdays out-on-the-town weekends
dismal early mornings when shuffling, weightless trash
reminds you of unholy loneliness
stripping you of denial, cars sparsely populated
you might as well be drunk, but all that will change in the morning.

It starts here it ends here, here and everything
in between is getting here
it’s all about this place this subterranean
universe spreading roots of envy
potato reproduction beneath the weed sky.

CATHYANN CUSIMANO is the author of two works of non-fiction and 5 volumes of poetry, with her latest collection Walking Down the Street With the Sound of Life in Her Eyes due to be released early 2019 by Amethyst and Emerald Publishing.