Jake Eduardo Vermaas
Soursop
[ on a brokedown MAX train thinking of Icarus ]
The ecosystem of a train car: sterile, hermetic in
diffidence or exile. Heads sealed in dark mirror
glow eyes narrow out of focus at a distance of the
floor slick white plastic casing enclosing gloss
surfaces sliding selves contained away from hard
edges figures & divisions of city blocks where
once stood farms. But suppose one day was unique
say a backroom deal spilled resistance from a cigar
lit room’s door to steps city hall washed away on
batons and pepper spray waves to the street
become citizens blocking tracks. Say this day
the orange container you entered was instead
faded yellow darkened & altered from another
route, say at the halfway point on the new bridge
it gripped the tracks & stopped. Then, the mobile
city in miniature would at once be newly alien, an
immediate landscape of blurred faces and bodies
firming to fellow fares, to unknown names and
stories. Activity surrounds stillness as workers
labored orange vests in vain, silent curses versus
control panels on the fritz. After a time, small talk
exhausted locked in while walkers pass as if on rails
forced eyes meet in shared affliction a clever plot
to bolt. An old couple gazes out a window perhaps
imagining melted wings, the geometry of a farmer’s
field, a splash in the river at the edge of our frame.