Route 6: East Main Street/Montrose Heights

A thousand seamstresses with a thousand blunt needles,
held loosely in wrists spinning weirdly,
crowd the smoke filled break point gaining weight.

Blowing steam and screeching,
frames groaning with effort,
they pitch forward, yarn spun,
and grope along oily guide lines.

We are there too, spooning in swollen gut,
and cannot help but feel what they feel,
lulled by bruises gently commuted
into swaying congregation.

Erstwhile staggered twins,
we are cut from the same cloth,
though some have been mangled by our makers'
capricious and unpracticed hands.

Can you too feel their unsteady pull?

Arthritic engines whose heavy fingers crush
fruit flesh and glass with equal comprehension,
crushing even the fabric they work to mend?

Cobble-sphalt and brick-crete,
poor earth strewn with abandon,
all reduced at their mercy to dust-dye and exhaled.

They coat everything its drab color,
even you and I, exhaled also
onto this motley patchwork
haphazardly sewn over a network of scars.

We follow this heavy-handed stitch
along the frayed edges,
errant threads every one,

And splay outward from each iron spindle,
our loops random, brusquely anchoring
strange to stranger.

Stillborn, we pay to climb back in
and only at the last moment
do we pull our shared umbilical.