A transit car pole can tell you
many tales of times their steel
rod bodies were touched
By a community college kid
with Kleenex-filled jacket pockets
as she braves through flu season
By a beer-breathed Penguin’s fan
on the phone with his wife
relaying the 3rd quarter like a war story
By a 2nd generation Hispanic woman holding her plastic
bags by the flimsy handles that stretch ever so thinner
By an elderly man
scratching off lottery tickets
like bite sized scraps of a dry dandruff-ridden scalp
By a cardiac-eyed
Medicaid card carrier whose
lifeblood was replaced by metal
when the company switched to
an automated answering service
By a thirty-two-year old Penn State
grad heading to shovel french fries
into buckets just like his soot-faced
great-grandfather shoveled coal
By the administrative
assistant of a dentist who works
solely to afford anime
merchandise and streaming subscriptions
Touched by a soul that was now lost, not found
Morgan Boyer is the author of The Serotonin Cradle (Finishing Line Press, 2018) and a graduate of Carlow University. Boyer has been featured in Kallisto Gaia Press, Thirty West Publishing House, Oyez Review, Pennsylvania English, and Voices from the Attic. Boyer is a neurodivergent bisexual woman who resides in Pittsburgh, PA.
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 