Lynn McGee
Crush, 3
I clear the gap between the subway’s gliding
doors and platform’s yellow rubber ledge,
find a space on the plastic contoured bench
and cross my legs, flash the silver straps
of my sandals. We rise aboveground, level
with black tar roofs sunken at their centers,
pools of water mirroring clouds. Sunlight streams
through windows frosted with the residue
of winter. I squint and curl spiderlike on my seat.
I disembark and walk past the park, branches
beaded with buds. Last night, I sent you a photo,
feet crossed on the ottoman, the faintly-veined,
ambitious arch. A blister on the back of my heel
sings out now, with each step.
Lynn McGee is the author of Tracks (Broadstone Books, 2019) and Sober Cooking (Spuyten Duyvil Press, 2016), as well as two award-winning poetry chapbooks, Heirloom Bulldog (Bright Hill Press, 2015) and Bonanza (Slapering Hol Press, 1996). Here poems have appeared in the American Poetry Review, Southern Poetry Review, Ontario Review, Phoebe, Painted Bride Quarterly, Sun Magazine, and The New Guard, among other journals, as well as in the anthology Stonewall’s Legacy (Local Gems Press, 2019), edited by With José Pelauz, McGee wrote the children’s book Starting Over in Sunset Park (Tilbury House Publishers, 2020). She serves on the advisory board of the Hudson Valley Writers Center and co-curates the Lunar Walk Poetry Series with Gerry LaFemina and Madeleine Barnes. Online at lynnmcgee.com.
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