Continuing with the wonderful work from Ernest Hilbert's forthcoming All of You on the Good Earth.
Dusk in a Crowded Train
Compartment, Regretting My Life
I stayed up two days straight
with some old friends
In New York, and was charred,
gut sick, still wired,
Stuck on the Northeast
Corridor Express,
Suffering quietly as night
descended.
I was pressed to the window,
far too tired
To read, cramped by a pimpled
giantess
Who nodded to a thump in her
headphones.
The wrecked landscape of
north Jersey swung past:
Telephone poles tilted to
cold shimmer
Of swamp, rusted scaffolds,
graffitied stones,
Great piers rotted down into
tall, slow grass.
I focused on breathing, like
a swimmer.
Late rays shocked an oil
tank’s silver to white,
A dying flash, pulled fast
out of my sight.
Originally appeared in
American Poetry Review.
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