24 January 2010 | Vol. 9, No. 4
7 to 46th Street/Bliss
When the train picks up speed, it sounds like a woman screaming,
one woman all over the city, releasing her heat in a high, steady wail,
smearing her red mouth along the tunnel walls. I make and unmake
myself. When the doors open, anyone can come in, anyone does. I circle
back downtown, leave the book open on my lap, look over the map
that lays out the routes. The city is a muscle; we feed it. The woman across
from me shrivels up her face, sticks a finger in each ear to kill
the sound of the train rounding into Queensboro Plaza. My hands are warm
on my lap: they are for making and unmaking. I thumb the seam
of the sketchbook open while the city sits and waits, indifferent
and unblinking like all gods. My mouth is a hole, my body mine
to make. Wherever I go, I am this woman. Whoever needs erasing, I erase.
printer-friendly | 
About the author:
KC Trommer's poems have appeared in AGNI, the Antioch Review, Coconut, MARGIE, Octopus, Poetry East, the Sycamore Review, and other journals. A graduate of the MFA program at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, KC has been the recipient of an Academy of American Poets prize, as well as fellowships from the Maine Summer Arts Program, the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Prague Summer Program. Her sound and video work can be accessed via www.kctrommer.com. She lives in New York with her husband, the writer Justin Courter.
For further reading:
Browse the contents of 42opus Vol. 9, No. 4, where "7 to 46th Street/Bliss" ran on January 24, 2010. List other work with these same labels: poetry.
