The Trains
We felt them first. Fingers pressed to the rails,
a dull rumble filled our hands and hummed into
our arms before the cone of light, the great clatter
of metal against metal. Trestled high, above the
bridge on Grand Avenue, we knew those tracks
went on forever, between trees that lined the ties
like stations of the cross. The hill was forbidden but
holy, thick with clover, ripe with berries in spring.
The year I was nine, an April blizzard swept the
sky and we went to the trains in the dark. The wires
strummed into sparks, the rails were a dazzle of
shadows. Our faces — ghosts of our selves — reflected
in every train car window, lines of breath etched in
passing glass. Above us, chimney smoke hung like
smears of candle grease among the clouds.
We were grubby and poor, but we believed. We said
our prayers, ate fish on Fridays, and never rode
those trains. We could only kneel in something like
wonder, something like praise, and wait for the
tracks’ reverent shudder. The memory is a gauze
engine that time blows through and keeps me small.
From What Matters (Welcome Rain Publishers, 2011)
First Published in an Earlier Version in Paterson Literary Review
Read by Nic Sebastian
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Twilight and What There Is
The gauze eyelid is gone and your spun glass hand. The past that always knew where to find you has lost its place. The ghosts have forgotten your name. There’s nothing left for the dead to remember—nothing catches up (there’s no meter running).
New grass lifts the field—bloodroot, bluebells, a thousand things so small and flawless they almost go unnoticed. Translation doesn’t escape you: you’re grateful for sunset’s watery rust and this, something instinctive called into being, more than perceived. More than memory, more than moment—nothing provisional. Anything you might say, might think, would be too much. You open your palms in a dusky Rorschach and let the dark fall through.
From A Lightness, A Thirst, or Nothing at All (Welcome Rain Publishers, 2015)
First Published in Ragazine, Volume 10, Number 2
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What You Know
A stray dog laps the moon from a broken flowerpot. Silk hydrangeas bloom against the fence. A heron stands on the clothesline—bluer than blue—perched where (sky, earth) edges converge.
On the wall, the painting of a clock ticks, hands painted in at three forty-seven. She takes a wax apple from the bowl and peels it with a silver fruit knife. Sugared bread dries on the table. Across the room, a dimensional window masquerades as persuasion. If you believe it, it is.
From A Lightness, A Thirst, or Nothing at All (Welcome Rain Publishers, 2015)
First Published in Ragazine, Volume 10, Number 2
Read by Nic Sebastian
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