hold your breath

orange & orange & orange
& orange-- each sconce: a fist
through the train window. hands
around the the throat, careful, 
the inevitable weight of water.
the fingers, a rat-belly city.
a handful of old hair to run
through like reed. we don't hold
our breath under the lincoln tunnel.
ears turn inside out, snail shells 
inverting, wool sock-- where will
you hide your tongues now? 
beneath the tracks a little girl
sits in the back seat of a blue
station wagon, swallowing her teeth.
they taste like blue gumballs.
instead, we breathe & the air has
rusted ivy. i tell you about 
the old subway system, the one
they built in the 1904, long
since sealed to the surface.
now it rests between stops, an ovary:
pockmarked & black graffiti.
the old clock telling stories
of schedule & blood. i remember the
squeal of rails-- the feet on tile.
how could they all have known
to arrive in the same body? 
i think of my body like this,
like a place to hold your breath 
between, like orange & orange & orange
& orange-- each light flickering 
behind your head, making halo,
making sirius & vega. what does the sun
think of these depths? has she 
relinquished all belief in 
caverns of flesh? given this
over to dark? 
alone in my bed again i feel a train
car hold their breath. i feel
the water above thrush maroon
& feather--each blood vessel a pigeon. 
each pigeon a stop to miss. C train,
collect vertebrae & jax. we don't
reach. i don't point to the old station
out the window & it wears
a cervix like a crown of thorns.
again she returns, too small to open.
a pocket knife for jaw-- slice through
lip & gum. you put your hand again
to the ceiling & down came the blood,
it was only a matter of time before
a necklace bead was devoured on the way in.
i sit in the sealed station.
collect the tampons & the tar. the rubble
& the ribbed condoms, hear the train 
run by on thin shore bird legs. we inhaled
like the air was a ball of orange.