"Other People" (poem)

I wrote this piece a couple of years ago for an anthology in which all of the selections would take inspiration from Ezra Pound's two-line Imagist poem "In a Station of a Metro" ("The apparition of these faces in the crowd, / Petals on a wet, black bough.").  Alas, that anthology never made it to publication, but I thought tonight would be a fitting time to post my poem here (not that the descent of its line numbers should be confused with the joyous final countdown to midnight in Times Square).


"Other People"

Furtive cross-car assessment:                                                  10
Skewed mannequins, communal autism;
The sway of the seatless--Geiger counter needles.
So many faces, but how many facades?
Which one, already dead inside,
Plots to play conductor, intends                                               5
To reroute everyone into inferno?
Insecurity haunts worse than any apparition.
These days trust only in the fact that
No matter what, you'll never know.                                        1