Poetry by Ally Malinenko

To the Men on the Subway

You can’t win.

I’m sorry to say, you just can’t win

because I know you’re trying

and I can see how hard it is

when the subway doors open

and a whole new flock of people

flood in,

weary from their job

and their life

and this city

and you frantically scan

for the elderly

or the pregnant

so that you can be a gentlemen

and give up your seat.

It’s not easy. I get that.

I certainly wouldn’t want to be in your position.

I often wonder, wouldn’t it just be easier if you kept standing

the whole time

even if your feet in those shoes

are about to cramp

and even if your back is sore from being

hunched in your cubicle all day in

that thankless job

in that nameless building

wouldn’t it be easier than having to worry?

But even with all that,

even with you taking the chance

and sitting

you still need to know

that if you look at me,

as I reach up

to hold the bar

on the train

my book balanced

in my other hand

and if our eyes meet

and if you point to the seat

and mouth want to sit down?

and I shake my head no,

and you glance at my body

as I suck in my stomach

embarrassed,

and a little sad

You need to know that

I’ll go home that night

and throw out that t-shirt

even if I love it

because now I can’t wear it again

knowing that in it

you looked at me

and you

thought

maybe

possibly

sort of

just a little bit

it’s hard to tell but

a gentlemen would offer

besides better safe than sorry

cause what if she is

pregnant.

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Individual Liberty, in the American Mind, Became Synonymous with America, and Americans Consider Themselves the World’s Freest People

There is a crowd of tourists

blocking the subway turnstiles

at Union Square.

They can’t figure out which way

to swipe their Metrocard

and I’m thinking to myself,

this is why tokens were better

when the cop taps me on the shoulder.

I stare at him

a little confused

and realize that even though

I peed at the bar before we left

I think I might have to go again.

“We need to check your bag,” he tells me,

pointing to his partner

at the table.

At first I’m confused

and then annoyed

but I comply

because he’s a cop

and if he says he needs to check my bag,

It must be true.

I drop it on the table

and the female cop

glares at me,

her tight face

under her little hat

and suddenly I hate her.

“Open it. Remove the contest of your bag, ma’am.”

I sigh loudly

because now I’m pissed

and from it

pull the new jacket I bought

at Old Navy because it’s getting cold

and I don’t have a jacket

and the empty plastic water bottle.

“Good enough?” I ask

before ramming the contents back in my bag.

It’s a pretty shoddy search

as far as searches go.

If I had a bomb

I could have folded it in the coat

or slipped it in the pocket.

She doesn’t look in there

never even touches the jacket

because she doesn’t really want to know.

I’m just here to fill

the White Girl Quota for the day.

They’ve been doing this since 2005

and I’ve never been stopped.

Sure I’ve seen the police, standing like SS

hands folded, eyeing us from under their hats

but we’ve all just accepted it.

It’s the price of freedom, we tell ourselves

or those that control our freedom

tell us

and we agree.

Because we’re Americans and nothing if not agreeable.

Either way, you wouldn’t be worried unless you had something to hide right?
Isn’t that true? Isn’t that what they ask you if you protest?

“Everything okay, Osama?” my husband asks me

as I rejoin him,

now pushing past the tourists,

slipping through the turnstile

and catching the N train back to Brooklyn

just before they close the doors

thinking to myself

so help me god,

if I had missed this train…..

Author bio: 

Ally Malinenko is the author of The Wanting Bone (Six Gallery Press) and the children's novel Lizzy Speare and the Cursed Tomb (Antenna Books). She lives in the part of Brooklyn where the tour buses don't come but was voted to have the best halal food and she blathers on at www.allymalinenko.com.