marlo starr / 2nd place editors' choice prize in poetry

Tunnel

Yellow, underground. The trains lurch and halt. Cities

in the night, ordered by signs of catastrophe.

My shoes caked with snow. We strobe through time

without geography. In the tunnel, memory follows

a circuit, duplicating surface nodes. We fix

the final alphabet, a voice snagged under

railing. I was a girl hawking roses under

the overpass, city-less in cities

interchangeable. The price? he fingered. Fixed 

before you, sir. But after, the catastrophe

unfixed us. I was. Where I follow, she follows

the course of history. She was, I am. A node in time.

In a repeating city. The hours, interchangeable. Time

stagnates in pools of mineral rot, slicked under

platforms of rust, stalactite dripping. What follows

an artery of evidence through branching cities;

the rubble cleared, who remembers the catastrophe?

The cars bevel on their hinges. We fix

our sign to any star. Or the memory of stars fixed.

My snow puddling down the line. In another time,

a girl peddling roses recalls catastrophe.

In the oily mirror, a face gawks. Under

the tracks, the hiss of cars, sibilance of cities.

The event follows language, language follows

the event. At the flower factory, they follow

the belt’s ragged pace. The rules fixed

to the wall, mechanical carpet of thorns. A city

is a system like memory is a system. Time,

an arrangement of nodes under

the sparking grid. Yellow. This catastrophe

as new as the last catastrophe,

identical hours filed down-chain. They follow

and pile into the present’s tender horde. Under

the factory belt, the crush of petals, a fix

of thorns tearing hands. In time

we hear the catacombs flooding. The cities

in the night speak catastrophe, the sonic fix,

this hiss in air that follows, soft slush of time

under windy echoes. Repeating. Across cities.

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Marlo Starr bio