Change Here – Gill Lambert

 

When the conductor says

take all your belongings with you,

ignore him, you won’t need them;

you have to be hands-free, unburdened

by the sack of past you’re carrying.

Someone will find it under the seat,

eye it suspiciously and call security.

 

Change here. Tread purposefully

through crowds of strangers

wearing Monday faces, wait for

the surge of a Friday night battle

for home, or join the orderly line

of the ticketless, leaving it to chance.

You’ll know your train when you get to it.

 

If a man you know from years ago,

boarding a train you’re walking past,

says see you later, don’t wonder when?

Know this time he’s gone for good,

don’t waste time worrying

whether see you later means

twenty minutes or twenty years.

 

Once you’re on the train, stay on it.

Where you end up might be a shock,

but looking back at where you’ve come from

will put things in perspective.

Start walking and follow the exit signs;

this is not your destination,

there is still a long way to go.

 

 

Parallax – Oz Hardwick

 

We adapt to desires of the moment, polymorphic minds,

constant flux, floating weightless in space

between our lips. We search in the same direction,

eyes absorbing language across distance shifting

invisibility to intimacy. Each hair on our bodies

is an aerial, scanning proximity, leaning into the magnetism

of passing spheres, decoding signals sent

when we were still animals, aspiring to limbs. We are made

from the stuff of stars: I spiral, foetal, in a void

of glimmerings; you shrink into black light,

your radiation dispersing without decay. We will hold

this orbit until we discover new worlds or,

in our singular dance, spiral into the Sun.