When We Talk About Trains: A Conversation up and down the depot, just folks a girl with a peacock hat skirts clinging to her thighs the heat of the passenger train in the lonesome quilted prairie the train runs a line of stitches vietnam tunnel a hole in the eyes of the boxcar men the lullaby of the night train rocking, rocking the way home when the train was a cradle that rocked me slow … and when you did the same between stations longing for downhome fiddling, the blur of corn, the open door of the boxcar and a mandolin postcard towns every train cut down to size one place or another it’s all the same on the orphan train today, the city, tomorrow, arkansas all of the straw plucked from the scarecrow Idling at the railway crossing the train drowns out the velvet underground remember that cautionary tale the headphones that kept him from hearing the train the day came nothing was enough no more gin, not one drop of comfort: all I knew I could count railroad ties I knew the times of the trains by heart head on, headlights, goodnight bars of light and noise apartment by the el train life train living low tide a flat horizon glisten from sand to sea the train roars through not stopping in every other life she was a ladybug reductive, red & spotted sometimes reincarnation works that way, father said, pointing at the train -- her face kept chugging creosote soaks our noses skipping from rail to rail shiny on top waiting for the ride to end the bleary drone of horn one man one guitar and a long blue grass song about trains the stop before the last stop hop on watch the rush of the Dakotas a harmonica grows teeth blows holes in my soul a harmonica chainsaws and the train rolls on bends around the hills seeing our own end and the prisoners below the golden grass just before the tunnel All her stories connect like boxcars mexico singapore delta oil it’s all the same hollow rain sound of an empty freight blowing horn sudden gray this always train Written with Jennifer Savage Copyright Reka Jellema & Jennifer Savage October 24, 2014
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