by Sean Ahern
“The broken ones
can't find home,
so they wander
and live in cardboard boxes
that held someone else's life,
a family, a husband, a wife.”
The City Underneath
There's a city underneath
a false floor leads
below the jigsaw streets,
a cathedral of steel
in concert with moans
echoes from the surface.
Where the body shops
build people from ash and bone,
they meander above
to walk and smile
for neon screens.
They pray, but their hands are empty.
They pay, and their hands are empty.
The broken ones
can't find home,
so they wander
and live in cardboard boxes
that held someone else's life,
a family, a husband, a wife.
They watch as shapes stride,
sinking back into their underworld
where they once belonged.
Their fingers and feet filthy from digging
as they try to purchase the ground
but only their bodies are for sale.
The dirt here doesn't seem real,
it knows too much;
it remembers a million stories
written by soles that walk above.
Sean is an emerging writer from Southern California where he resides with his two children and corgi. Sean has a B.A in Creative Writing from Cal State University Northridge.
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