OLD TRAINS
Musty smell of curry
burned into flea-ridden
seats, horse-hair pricking
cracked mirror
antique prints, brown
daguerreotype school
girl, unlettered eyes,
leather window strap
with worn snub-holes,
fag-ends strayed under
seats where extra suitcases
support dangling feet
Creak, bluster and crack
of ticket-collector's
rough slide-door arrival
Tingle of cinders harsh
in a tunnel, window crashed
shut leaking sooty smells,
reflecting wide-eyes, disheveled
hair, uneasy eagerness
until they burst into
country or long lines of smutted
laundry, row-houses smudged,
gardens wilted, sooted
Down the corridor, clackety
clack to the toilet-stink,
balance and pee but don't
touch: flush and watch
the sleepers catch and fly
under, sticky handles of sweat and
long-passed disease
Return to the clunkety-
clunk old velveteen; nothing to
do but smell, touch, watch
CP
Joanna M. Weston has published poetry, reviews, and short stories in anthologies and journals for twenty years. She has also published two middle-readers, The Willow-Tree Girl, and Those Blue Shoes, and a book of poetry, A Summer Father.
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