In the Narrow Slip of Night

Wearing her sneakers on streets
below freezing she steps ankle-deep
with no socks and torn jeans
in gutters backed up with crime.

Searching the cracks of asphalt-black
snow, she's looking for cardboard to cover
the floor of a doorway chosen
for sleeping tonight. A place to get laid,

a chance to score, next to the subway
that grips slow suicide in the pockets
of hustlers pushing their way past the smell
of gas rags and trash burning in cans.

Leaning on buildings condemned
to death, she waits in the shadows
torn down to spill her pain in the well
dug deep in her arms. She holds a knife

unfolded in the cradle of a battered
photograph, pretending in the trains that
scream for mercy as they pass unseen
in tunnels carved through rivers of bone.