Beneath the highway, the parking garage

with its tarpaulin-tented spaces sinks

away from a gray weekday, into

the city’s bedrock. Shopping-cart homeless

wander through it, gathered like congregants

flocked to a subterranean bazaar

or an underground revival meeting,

though lime deposits rain down upon them

like a post-testament plague, and traffic

choirs overhead tremble, horn sections

heralding their road-rage psalms, while

rush hour ushers in dusk then dark.

—Pauline Uchmanowicz