ORANGE LINE SHUTDOWN, DAY ONE

by Chad Parenteau

Now comes the latest upheaval for the [Boston’s] weary commuters: a complete 30-day shutdown of the Orange Line, the area’s second most-traveled subway line, which typically provides 101,000 passenger trips a day from Boston’s southwest neighborhoods through its downtown core and into Somerville, Medford and Malden, three cities to the north. Transit officials announced the shutdown after a series of safety problems on the T, as the region’s transit system is known, including an Orange Line train that caught fire in July while on a bridge, prompting one rider to jump into the Mystic River below. —The New York Times, August 23, 2022

First of trainless

thirty days, possibly

preluding forever.

 

Slower busses

bound for Mattapan

might have chance

 

to shine, if not for

oversized shuttles

to Copley Square

 

pushing commerce

first, blocking last

gasps of commute.

 

Newspaper calls it

“Orange Crush’

because if officials

 

could tighten belts,

poke extra holes,

make new notches,

 

stretch bodies further

from city’s center,

they already would.

 

Forrest Hills remains

quiet as crematorium,

ashen holdovers already

 

gone from benches.

Nobody wants to be

left further behind.

Chad Parenteau hosts Boston's long-running Stone Soup Poetry series. His latest collection is The Collapsed Bookshelf. His poetry has appeared in journals such as Résonancee, Molecule, Ibbetson Street, Cape Cod Poetry Review, Tell-Tale Inklings, Off The Coast, The Skinny Poetry Journal, Nixes Mate Review, and the anthology Reimagine America from Vagabond Books. He serves as Associate Editor of the online journal Oddball Magazine.