Only subscribers may read this in its entirety. What follows is a free preview, truncated midway through.

1 / On the Train

Outback of the mind. Shiver of the fens
in oily desolation staining the swamp water
frozen over. Newark up ahead, the telephoto lens
of the heart homing in on a dead son or daughter.

If you wait long enough, the oil tanks and refineries
will stand up cleanly in the train windows
while light falling through itself falls through the gantries
trapping waste ground and weeds in cats-cradle shadows.

And in the ghost train the guy in uniform scared to be going
reminds me of you, pinned up on my wall,
Sgt. K. I. S. discharged Jan. 17 in Chaffee, Arkansas:

eyes averted from the stares of the living
who never called your name at roll call or mail call
and, failing to take your hand then, can’t do so now.