Frankford Lullaby
If Philadelphia were my mother
tonight I’d let her wrap me
in her arms and sing the Blue
Line to me as a lullaby of reflected
window selves and scratched seats,
then lay me down on Margaret
Orthodox station with my hustle
in my hand.
On the block of those streets
I was a rock star running hard
with farm boy blood in my veins,
trying to crack those city eyes,
those headlights cocked
and deadly. The black
tinted windows, the Mustang
boys so ready, priest
pimp tripping the sidewalk down
with a limp.
The whispers rip past
the tracks, shifting the
panhandler’s traffic
simple, flannel, Irish. Church
rises up away from the subway,
the subwoofers of holy lethargy
pounding out an elegy to my concrete
mother, buses shuffling down her
asphalt thighs past the iron
shells of burned out warehouses.
There’s a ticket token pass spoken “Erie
Torresdale” by the conductor
as he glances back, black billboards
stumbling drunkenly on. Getting off
and walking tall, I let the accent slip
down my throat like semen, acidic and young,
afraid of nothing but my mother
wonders if I’ll wake up from her song.