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At Montgomery Street Station


I think I will quit my job.

Funny how the rush of wind
that streams down the
tunnel is warm-cool like
the gold-tint light of
failing autumn.

On a cold, round slab seat
it’s easy to imagine quitting
but the frothy moments over
novelty coffee between long
stretches of mindless coding
is the only pleasure and Don
even said so--that it’s the
small moments that bump
and squeeze and sweat simply
and as satisfying as a goddamned
cold glass of water on a hot day
that make the desk and the
days and the paychecks worthwhile.

The human automatons file in
and out of worn red-carpeted
elevators in every towering
gray skeletal skyscraper in the city.
the cafes, the delis, the glossy
slick-shot trendystores cluster
between the zoos of cubicles
which isn’t so bad for the shareholders
with blood and lust and gusto
in The Gap and the Sassy Lady.

Yes. I will quit my job.

Funny how the bricks on the floor
of the station used to be red, but
now they’re a worn-down desert
rose soul. The perfect peacefulness
of the shimmering silver train bodies
as they gossip, shiver, and blast their
ways to destinations on LCD signs.
I hear the operators get great benefits.


-Ren Adams (2000)

Publication credits:
First appeared in Tokens: A Subway Anthology. P& Q Press. 2000.