Che Guevara

the humidity comes down heavy over the whole sweating city, and we’re all gasping there on the eastbound underground, choking on air thick as soup, the train rattling through the black tunnels like some endless iron beast hungry for more souls.

toddlers wail and groan in their sticky seats while their mothers bend low, murmuring soft spells of comfort, offering water and soothers from their purses, swaying with the motion of the train, while the lecherous old goats in sharp Savile Row suits lean in close with hungry eyes, stealing long-planned glances down the loose summer blouses, perspiration rolling off the masses in rivers.

we slump on that fake velvet like drowned rats, backs soaked through, the whole car one big human stew of breath and flesh and unstoppable summer fever.

and there in the corner a girl with high sharp cheekbones, glowing under a faint sheen of sweat, scanning the morning paper with quiet fire, her jaw working slow and rhythmic on a mouthful of egg and cress on rye, real and alive.

she lowers the paper to turn the page, and there it is, high on her chest in the damp light, a wild birthmark riding the skin like the ghost of the great Cuban himself, Che Guevara in a full defiant pose. a single shining line of sweat slides down across his face and cigar, tracing the revolution in living skin. the only rebel left in the whole choking carriage, riding the chest of a woman eating her breakfast, while the goats hunt blouses and the city cooks.

revolution rides
a stranger’s skin on the Tube—
sweat crosses his face.