First Stanza, Lines 1–13

Barbarese’s poem “Walk You Body Down” begins with a very ordinary phrase. The narrator sits somewhere, possibly waiting for a bus or train, with strangers all around him. The narrator mentions a couple on his left. He is aware of them, eavesdrops on their conversation, but appears not to know them.

The narrator relates that the couple “is breaking up, the baby.” If the reader overlooks the punctuation in this line, the image that is created is violent, and the brutality of this image forces the reader to pay attention, which is probably exactly what the poet intended. Looking more closely, the reader sees the comma in the second line and realizes that the couple is breaking up, arguing, but they are not hurting the baby. The tension between them might be flaring, which may make the narrator...