Lounge Car
consider the train
& the forest’s off-season cargo
puzzling the carriage window
in red & yellow schemes
considering the station master is on leave
the train leaves
from anywhere.
There is
subterfuge.
The moon hangs like a hospital gown
dragging on dirty parquet tiles. The
train passes a river
& a house & inside the house
lives man who hasn’t looked at the
river
or the house in 20 years
little dumb waiters wait
flattering,
trained as feathered hats
in a forest of off-season birds
in the breakfast car, eyes
crumpeted
with Marlboros & mascara, she says
“Are you reading
the French symbolists?”
the florist & bride-to-be
postman &
tennis pro, the opium dealer
& financier
ride first class
in a lounge car to hell.
The magician’s escaped rabbits
take cover in a top hat &
consider the rain.
Quiet Car
nobody is quiet in the quiet car.
there’s talk of spring training & true crime podcasts.
the air smells faintly of cherry
lozenge.
there are class distinctions
& a lady who vanishes
to the bathroom every 10
minutes
“I found it sharp & twisty,” she said. “Enthralling.”
“Well
constructed,” agreed the woman
in the
Juicy Couture tracksuit. “Multilayered.
As I listened I realized I knew
something
that might hold the key.”
beyond anti-vandal glass
the landscape is confined
& exhilarated, guillotine
sashing the Hudson
in a marquetry of
midafternoon light
“Alibis are based on accurate timetables,” she
said & when
she said it she realized
she always
wanted to be
at the
center of a tragedy.
Sleeper Car
moon, moon, on a black field counting
sheep.
the Pullman pulls-on, station to station
a Breuhaus roomette of tubular-framed
chairs, a sleeper
with berths slipped together
like cranial sutras, headboard
bones stopblocked by the first class attendant’s fresh
linens &
soft smile. but when I wake the pieces don’t fit
it’s a
dream or a flashback
of a
dream where I have eyes lidded & balled
like Sylvia Plath
& dance with all the sad girls at the Batcave.
I’m getting better, my husband says
my sleeper car sidekick with gum
on his shoes
& green, green as a
goblin with jealousy
of bats, the belfry— a beige, tunnel vision man
who doesn’t know
that a dead body sets up the story.
but what’s
marriage if not two people acting together
to be
deadlier than one. we’ll talk through
the plot. call deathhawks from the
shadows.
moon, moon, on a black field counting sheep
how long is lights out?
But the distance fails to
arrive.
& mountains are
ambivalent suggestion.
Damon Hubbs: Constant gardener. Casual birder. Loves a good scone, pulpy paperbacks, synthesizers. Recent poems featured in Cajun Mutt Press, Fevers of the Mind, Horror Sleaze Trash & Apocalypse Confidential.
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