Royal Transit
by Mark Neely
How long since I rode a bus? Something I used to do
most days under my crown of headphones.
Everything had its soundtrack—Murmur, Doolitle,
Pleased to Meet Me—even the stinking woman
with plastic sacks roosting like chickens around her legs,
the young punk father across from her
flexing his purple-haired toddler
like a new tattoo. I was heading downtown
to see a show, a few cheap beers sour on my tongue—
that tongue was useful then, wet as a berry, safe
inside my teeth as we squealed through campus,
past the bank where I bounced checks,
past Lonnie’s where a dollar bought bottomless chili,
where I sat over bowl after plastic bowl
doused with oily hot sauce and scribbled
down the first few thoughts I ever had,
then on past pizza joints and Chinese joints with their tubs
of yellow packets and Greek joints smelling of burnt lamb. . .
and by god at First and Green she stepped on in sweet
jeans, hair dyed that Martian, indie-girl red,
her white tank top carrying the reflection of her breasts
like clouds on the gray, smudged windows of the bus.
I screwed my face into a look of boredom
cultivated for this moment, the only way I knew
to keep from calling out, from falling at her feet,
the kind of thing you couldn’t even do in poems.
She glanced, I glanced, we looked away.
I got off four blocks early when I saw her ring the bell.
And yes, she turned and smiled as I stepped
from the gasping carriage which brought me to her,
brought me everywhere in fact,
back when I was a shy young king.
