During the reign of restlessness
The only open seat
is beside a questionable
person. Wilting
you ease into the
space beside him.
He asks if you have a habit.
“A habit
isn’t a bad thing,” he says. “Some people live their whole lives with a habit.”
The train you ride causes a strong wind as
it arrives in the next station.
On the platform, a woman’s hair
rises and falls like an empire.
The phone you clutch carries a message
you’re unable to delete.
Other things you cannot discard are mistaken ideas about the rich and the casual slights by so-called friends.
Camera-ready smiles appear genuine
despite the vacant eyes tucked within
layers of makeup.
“We are troubled by behavior
that does not align with our own:
Your assignment for today is surrender.”
A slender shriek escapes your lips
while you doze among the beginnings and endings
of things discovered within
the night’s fragrant pulp.
Hudson Chapel
Maneuvering like
atomic particles, seafarers
ready their
kayaks as a
bird pirouetting on
the branch above my
head begins its
strange call: a drilling
sound as persistent as
examined conscience. Forlorn
industrial structures
squat on
a pier to my left while
a lone
seagull, impervious as
false confidence, floats toward
me along the tide.
It is assumed small
birds possess
no malice, no charity, no philosophy…
but how do we know?
Someday scientists
will view the
unconscious mind with special
instruments just as today they
inspect someone’s internal
organ — a liver, say, or
a heart — with contemporary
machines. The kayakers
in dayglo life vests grow smaller
as they glide into the distance.
Overhead
the motor of an airplane
drones and a fly, its
transparent wings twitching, lands within
the shadow
of my foot.
A woman and her
husband in early old age are
speaking in Russian as
they approach. The
woman passes
three empty
benches, then sits right beside
me… crowding me.
She turns and
says “Gud mohrnink” with a smile. In a
gentle voice her
husband scolds
her for her
sweet moxie which, glancing at
me, he understands I
forgive-respect-admire. On
the breeze, I smell
her, her
scent is not unpleasant just
dissimilar to my own. I suspect
she eats more meat than I do. Pickled or
otherwise prepared parts, perhaps
livers or maybe
hearts, the discarded
organs of the same
animals I
consume on occasion.
Exhaling, I watch the narrow houses
perched on a cliff across the river.
They stand isolated yet together,
whispering confidential secrets into
strong winds. Meanwhile
peace, random
yet always certain, arrives to bathe
the island, a scene of
colluding energies, as we three
sit side by side
observing.
Melville,
how right you were
to send Ishmael
to the sea, the sea
the sea:
strange mirror
of self-
discovery, a
bewildering pulse of
eternity.
Susan Scutti grew up in Woodbridge, NJ and has lived in New Haven, CT, Anchorage, AK, Boston, MA, Atlanta, GA, Washington, D.C. and her current home city, New York. She loves to walk along the Hudson, listening to audiobooks and watching those passing in the opposite direction.
Please note: Poetry is compressed to fit smart phone screens. If you are reading this poem on a phone screen, please turn your screen sideways to make sure that you are seeing correct line breaks for this poem.
THE CITY KEY 