The Back of Trudy’s Head Everything, at once came to Trudy on the bus, the world through a window smeared with hair grease came in clear, she looked around at all the other passengers and knew us — felt our tension in her shoulders, drew a breath of body odor, smelled our fear. And the thick, pink man who sat ahead of Trudy leaned back to scratch his mat of ratted graying hair releasing flakes of skin down his back and in the air, then turned to smile a crooked-tooth smile at himself in the window, that at night is both a window and a mirror. Trudy pulled the cord to make the driver stop, as it was all that she could think to do, and when he did the doors swung open but Trudy could not get off — no one did but…
The Women: Poems by Stephen Jackson
