Written by
Bernadette Geyer |
Train.
Distant Train.
Praise the glorious distance of Train.
Dogs bark, reply to the mournful echo of Train's whistle.
Train looks back, keeps moving.
Train carries its boxcars of secrets further and further away (and even further still) from those who profess to love Train, but who do not run after him.
Eyes brimmed with glassy reflections of Train.
To watch Train pass is to feel your life as a single low note quiver from the rough pads of your toes to the stooped hunch of your shoulders.
To watch Train pass is to feel the vibrato of your first singular thought trilling in your ears, casting inward to slide the escarpment of your throat, until Train shudders the memory in the hollow of your belly.
Train leaves and returns like an abusive lover: the completion of necessary cycles.
Machinery joined, unjoined, loud and effusive.
Belligerent Train no sooner announces his arrival and is gone again, to another town, another set of rails against which to preen.
Can you feel Train's fist inside you? Can you feel the assault with the strength of ten thousand wishes blown from the head of a dandelion?
Train is gone and not gone.
For us, Train is the still-warm track we know does not disappear, but even continues to exist outside our sight range.
We trust in the existence of Train, even when we can no longer see him.
We believe in Train even when the night's silence fights our ears.
We await the coming of Train even when the unbelievers tell us Train is not expected.
We imagine Train's call and response like a cantor and a choir.
We pray to Train for the cleansing of our sins.
Train was.
Train is.
Train shall be evermore.
We sit on the tracks.
We wait.
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Written by
Federico García Lorca |
The fat lady came out first,
tearing out roots and moistening drumskins.
The fat lady
who turns dying octopuses inside out.
The fat lady, the moon's antagonist,
was running through the streets and deserted buildings
and leaving tiny skulls of pigeons in the corners
and stirring up the furies of the last centuries' feasts
and summoning the demon of bread through the sky's clean-swept hills
and filtering a longing for light into subterranean tunnels.
The graveyards, yes the graveyards
and the sorrow of the kitchens buried in sand,
the dead, pheasants and apples of another era,
pushing it into our throat.
There were murmuring from the jungle of vomit
with the empty women, with hot wax children,
with fermented trees and tireless waiters
who serve platters of salt beneath harps of saliva.
There's no other way, my son, vomit! There's no other way.
It's not the vomit of hussars on the breasts of their whores,
nor the vomit of cats that inadvertently swallowed frogs,
but the dead who scratch with clay hands
on flint gates where clouds and desserts decay.
The fat lady came first
with the crowds from the ships, taverns, and parks.
Vomit was delicately shaking its drums
among a few little girls of blood
who were begging the moon for protection.
Who could imagine my sadness?
The look on my face was mine, but now isn't me,
the naked look on my face, trembling for alcohol
and launching incredible ships
through the anemones of the piers.
I protect myself with this look
that flows from waves where no dawn would go,
I, poet without arms, lost
in the vomiting multitude,
with no effusive horse to shear
the thick moss from my temples.
The fat lady went first
and the crowds kept looking for pharmacies
where the bitter tropics could be found.
Only when a flag went up and the first dogs arrived
did the entire city rush to the railings of the boardwalk.
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Written by
Marcin Malek |
Long stalks of rain
are growing from the skies
down towards ash-black soil,
softer than deer hearts
frozen in concentration
at river banks
Everything that is not here
lies beyond these waters – more effusive
than a fisherman’s song,
when come evening time
they sail back to theirs rocky homes
settled at Shannon’s ridges
winding like a maggot in a downpour
and greener still
than eyes of women
that bear the same name
Wise men of Cuilcagh –
the orchard’s guardians
they knew the danger,
sowing the seeds of forbidden fruits
That she will come – an innocent girl
Who’d turn her lips and then flow
like morning dew into the world
of underground streams
And when September fog will fall
her ghost will rise up through the night
and like a sea gull at open sea
hanging in midair, once more,
she will look
into the depths of Lough Allen
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