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Underground

When MTA workers speak

they speak  too loud

my father says

because of all the noise

nights when storms break

onto the city     and the city talks back

above       ground

across       turnstiles

through      sidewalk grates

underground

they gesture and

clangaclack

and

thunder and

my father once       clattercrash

once one of them

once swallowed   spoke with the mouth of   a storm

but now             no words for the dead

my father saying      has something else to say

about all of the all of this

but his voice

now              a fast wind

through a shaft

his fists

blind hail

on the tunnel walls

but when the train rolls in

it roars over even this      this breeze bang bellow

like the whole goddamned sky

is tumbling down

from ErouFind more by Maya Phillips at the library

Copyright © 2019 Maya Phillips
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Four Way Books.

Published in Maya Phillips Poems

This program is supported in part by a grant from the Idaho Humanities Council, a State-based program of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this (publication, website, exhibit, etc.) do not necessarily represent those of the Idaho Humanities Council or the National Endowment for the Humanities.