14.1 (Fall 2009) | The 2River View | Authors Poems PDF Make the Mag Archives 2River |
Approaching Paris
Beneath the rain
The blue-gray glum
No river Seine
No Arc de Triomphe
Only empty countryside
A fallow field
A horse-hitched cart
A narrow red-dirt road
How am I to recognize
This terrain
As France? On the tarmac
Diesel fuel
A bus of darting eyes
Slimy fish pressed into tin
Later, bags and boxes
Belched from metal mouths
On the street, Moroccans
Whistle from their cabs
Another bus, a Metro train
Every ad in French
How am I to recognize
The evil from the good?
That blind man begging
That woman in a hood
Metro Musicians
for Chino & Abel
One slung guitar, one funky velvet hat
They ride the Metro underground
Nothing back home but a cold-water flat
The shy one grins, a timid cat
Fingertips plucking, sucking sound
From his guitar; his friend's funky hat
Hangs in the air, a pesky gnat
Buzzing a song, bouncing around
Reaping the rent for a cold-water flat
The singer kneels down by a young girl's lap
Her eyes resist, but her smile unfrowns
One slung guitar, one funky velvet hat
Once their song ends, the passengers clap
Coins feed the hat like rain from a cloud
Not drips in a drain of a cold-water flat
I, too, contribute a clink to their sack
I riding trains all day through town
No slung guitar, no old funky hat
And nothing — no home, not even a flat
Jay Rubin teaches writing at The College of Alameda in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he publishes Alehouse. He holds an MFA in Poetry from New England College. contact
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