subway poems
The train I took home today was one of those new ones with digital screens instead of paper displays. The one I was staring at flashed through a bunch of ads (bermuda cyber monday sale (the whole country?? what a steal!), one world trade (I thought everyone agreed it wasn't a good idea to name it the same thing as before), dunkin donuts $6 meal set (they could've come up with something better for their IP vehicle than DD IP Holder LLC)). After the ads, it cycled through the MTA's latest poem selection, a piece called "Thread". I really like the subway poems. My favorite train to see them on is the N or Q line, at night coming back from Brooklyn, on the bridge, where I can read the poem before we get above ground, then stare into the Manhattan skyline and wonder what I'm doing with my life.
You can't really do that with the digital versions, though. Firstly, who reads that fast? It is quite literally my job and one of my only marketable skills to be able to read, but it's impossible to process 11 lines of poetry in the same window that you're given to look at hash browns and think "mmm crispy". Secondly, a main benefit of writing is that it is not ephemeral - you can sit with it, read and re-read, give your reactive thoughts and emotions time to meld with the words on the page until you're sufficiently satisfied with yourself. To be dramatic about it, reading poetry this way feels like being force fed like a foie gras duck when we should really be aiming for pasture-raised.
Anyways - takeaways from this post: give the subway poetry a read; I miss physical media. Also, I was bored at work and spent a good chunk of today reading random New Yorker articles. So we can thank that for the melodramatic tone of this post.
For my friends who don't have the privilege of relying on America's best public transit system: Aforementioned poem Another cool one