Tag: subway
River
(Untitled)
Exit
“Another thing I enjoy is eating candy by myself while I read a book in the evening, but I don’t think that will make a good happy memory either. I like to play the piano, I like to look at the plants that come up in the yard beginning in March, I enjoy walking with my dog, and looking down into his face at his good eye and his bad eye, I like to see the sky in the late afternoon, especially in November, I like petting my cats, hearing their cries, and holding them. But I suspect that the memory of my pets will not be enough, either, even if I love them. There things that make me laugh, but often they are grim things, and they will not make a good happy memory either, unless I share them with someone else.” —Lydia Davis, from “Happy Memories”
(for “Visitors,” a new, ongoing series on Boston subway passengers)
Two for Evans
(Three more for a “Visitors,” a new, ongoing series of subway passengers in Boston.)
Swallowed Like Jewels
WHITE, WHITE COLLARS
We work in this building and we are hideous
in the fluorescent light, you know our clothes
woke up this morning and swallowed us like jewels
and ride up and down the elevators, filled with us,
turning and returning like the spray of light that goes
around dance-halls among the dancing fools.
My office smells like a theory, but here one weeps
to see the goodness of the world laid bare
and rising with the government on its lips,
the alphabet congealing in the air
around our heads. But in my belly’s flames
someone is dancing, calling me by many names
that are secret and filled with light and rise
and break, and I see my previous lives.
—Denis Johnson, The Incognito Lounge
(This photograph is from Visitors, an ongoing series of street photography taken on Boston’s mass transit.)
