Sexy Speaks to the Conductor
Another train’s predawn scream ignites down-valley,
sprawls through the black window,
over the sheets, over the overturned water glass
next to the unplugged alarm clock. How
can one not be thinking of friends who chose the noose,
the nine-story fall? Sexy too has sat with an exit loaded in his hand,
can still taste the grease and steel eye-bead whenever speaking to strangers
and some friends. So
he says to the conductor: the man staring down your cattle guard is not
going to move. Like you, burning up the brakes and terrified, something
invitingly bright is riding down his tracks. If you must
do something, honor this moment and lay off the horn.
If you must do something, start shoveling coal. 