LindaAnn LoSchiavo
Subway Pervert
Because all dirty crimes we can’t unsee
Are kept by brain’s biographer, replayed,
The Subway Pervert cannot be erased.
As if by previous arrangement, he’d
Be waiting after class—ten forty-five
PM—his cock unleashed on subway stairs
While masturbating, daring passersby
To stare or stop his public pleasuring.
He blocked the only entrance to my train.
Ignoring him, determined to get past
Untouched—this tollbooth troll outwitted me.
He knew disgust and fear exact their fees.
Women’s untold lives are controlled, fish-bowled—
Cat-calling from construction crews, roughed up
By roofies, rubbed the wrong way by frotteurs,
Man-handled by suspicious fiancés—
As hot male breath clouds up once clear water.
I fantasize about invisible
Shields—safe greenhouses with protective glass
For goddesses who’ll never be defiled.
LindaAnn LoSchiavo is the author of the poetry chapbooks Conflicted Excitement (Red Wolf Editions, 2018), Concupiscent Consumption (Red Ferret Press, 2020], and A Route Obscure and Lonely (Wapshott Press, 2020). Her essay, “If Defamation Is Serious, Why Don’t Italian American Organizations Take It Seriously?” is included in the edited volume Anti-Italianism: Essays on a Prejudice (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).
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