City Blues
Bone chattering
rickshaw driver,
slow down.
I feel the weight of us
slip through his
left leg. His
tattered loafer
sinks into the groove
of the road. It
tells us that someone
bigger has been here before;
the brakes on his
bike stopped working
two weeks ago, but,
my god, he knows
how to rev and release,
I don’t feel a thing.
I adjust my hands:
palms open,
wrists crossed,
patient anchor on
my gut, hold me down
until morning.
Through smog, smoke,
through song, I see it now:
The sun is a star.
The sun is a star.
The sun is a star.
Mehtab Kaur is a writer who was once initiated into a gang without realizing it. She lives alone with her cat in Los Angeles, CA.
