Explore "Summer Evening: New York Subway-Station" by Maxwell Bodenheim on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
/ Perspiring violence derides / The pathetic collapse of dirt. / An effervescence of noises / Depends upon cement for its madness. / Electric light is taut and dull, / Like a nauseated suspense. / This kind of heat is the recollection / Of an orgy in a swamp. / Soiled caskets joined together / Slide to rasping stand-stills. / People savagely tamper / With each other's bodies, / Scampering in and out of doorways. / Weighted with apathetic bales of people / The soiled caskets rattle on. / The scene consists of mosaics / Jerkily pieced together and blown apart. / A symbol of billowing torment, / This sturdy girl leans against an iron girder. / Weariness has loosened her face / With its shining cruelty. / Round and poverty-stricken / Her face renounces life.
/ Her white cotton waist is a wet skin on her breast: / Her black hat, crisp and delicate, / Does not understand her head. / An old man stoops beside her, / Sweat and wrinkles erupting / Upon the blunt remnants of his face. / A little black pot of a hat / Corrupts his grey-haired head.