Early yesterday evening,
as I sat on a downtown train
reading a book titled Narrativity, Myth, and Revolution,
I noticed a woman sitting across from me
who was reading an even thicker book
titled Warfare, Gender, and Historiography.
What a pair, as my father used to say
about most of my mother’s married friends,
particularly a neighbor named Babs
who drank bourbon highballs and crossed her legs
on a couch in my parents’ living room
while her husband nursed a ginger ale.
What a pair, I muttered to myself as I rose
for the Astor Place stop
and spotted a man in a wool ski cap
who had his head in a doorstop called
Sexual Identity, Upheaval, and Illusion.
We all deserve each other, I muttered,
stepping onto the platform
and eyeing the red lights on the train
as it bore all the people and their books
into the future—a sudden reminder
that I was running late for tonight’s lecture,
“Hyper-Time: Death in the Future of the Future,”
the last in a series of talks that had begun
when the city was simmering hot,
I realized, pulling my scarf tight around my throat.