by Daniel Galef
There is a train that slides across
The straightedge horizon
A field over from one side of a house I sleep in
Eclipsing a hot-iron sunset
Severing the earth from the sky
Sometimes the martyred wheel loose a single snipped shriek as it passes
And the cows stand up
But by then it’s gone
Every night it grazes the field (not like a cow)
And like a cow it lows into the black air
And drifts the evening with a bouquet of bells
I would like to say that I imagine the lives of those aboard
Like a writer should, giving them little names
And little lives and picturing them in their mires
Stuck to each other and to the train like a flypaper
Instead, I imagine the train is unpeopled wholly
That the electric lights are on an automatic circuit
That every carriage is an empty husk
A bone scraped clean of marrow
And the engine bellows forward untended
Daniel Galef has been an actor, a teacher, a door-to-door poll taker, and a dictionary definition (“interfaculty,” which means “brilliant and handsome”). His poems, short stories, and miscellaneous magical writings have appeared in Bards and Sages Quarterly, Rat’s Ass Review, The Surreal Grotesque, and The Christian Century.
