DC PLACES ISSUE Yvette Neisser   THE SLOW PASSAGE TO ANACOSTIA If I stare long enough into the relentless dark, the X2 pulls to the corner, opens its tired jaw and pushes ahead lurch by lurch into the resistance of H Street: dusk sinking into sidewalks and take-out delis, hot dog vendors in empty lots, liquor store cashiers sealed behind glass. And within this moving husk, fifty strangers confined together but for the door that cringes open at each stop. Headphones spill faint rhythms into the bus’s half-silence, the steady hum of engine droning on pavement where no one speaks above the clink of coins in the machine—until one man’s voice pierces thick air, cursing the slow passage to Anacostia, cursing left turns and lights fading to yellow. No one lifts an eye except to gaze through scratched windows. Outside, the usual: kids strutting, shouting their own praises, streaming off the football field or out of church, one car radio blaring rap at a stoplight— and here, one man’s voice is a cry of longing to which no one will listen— a cry of stasis, of unlit bus stops and forsaken destinations, of the tense space between a man and woman waiting on a winter day. And still, the X2 follows H Street all the way to the city’s edge until something pulls its wheels like a magnet back into the gridded patterns of Northeast, where this man’s cry lingers like a vibration caught between the hum and the ear.   Yvette Neisser's poems and translations of poetry have appeared in Innisfree Poetry Journal, the International Poetry Review, and The Potomac Review, among other places. She is currently translating the work of Argentinian poet Luis Alberto Ambroggio for a bilingual edition of his poems. Her book manuscript, "Fields of Vision," was a finalist for the 2004 Gival Press Award. She resides in Silver Spring, MD with her husband and two children.   Published in Volume 7, Number 3, Summer 2006.   More by this author: Yvette Neisser Moreno: Audio Issue Yvette Neisser Moreno: Langston Hughes Tribute Issue Yvette Neisser Moreno