by Tony Brinkley
Train Ride at Night
I was on a fast train,
a night flight heading for the Fountain of Miracles
via the aurora borealis.
The train rushed along the tracks,
lighting the way in the dark.
But I didn’t know where we were, exactly.
No one knew who I was or why I was there.
I was alone.
The train whistle was so lonely in the night.
We sped past trees and telephone poles,
in the pouring rain, through saturated fields
alongside swollen streams and ruined towns,
where shanties’ roofs sagged in the downpour
and drenched Flags of Welcome dipped low
on heavy lengths of rope outside used car lots.
There were patches of fog from time to time,
and occasionally I could smell the sea, too.
I fell asleep.
When I awoke, a boy, his cheek pressed on mine,
was sobbing.
He told me he had seen the moon above the blackened treetops
and he offered it a ripe pear which had fallen onto the ground.
He told me he had seen himself in the mirror of the full moon.
He told me it was not fun to be a tree in an orchard of human faces.
Pamela Manché Pearce, Pushcart Prize nominee for chapbook, Widowland, (Green Bottle Press, London, 2018 is a co-author of Charles Street Trio: A Novel in Three Voices, 2022. Poet-at-large on “Planet Poet: Words in Space,” WIOX radio, the published author of poems, essays, short stories, and reviews, lives in New York. Instagram @pamelamanchepearcenyc Facebook.com/Pamela Manché Pearce www.pamelamanchepearcestudio.com
Tony Brinkley’s poetry, art and translations have appeared recently in Collateral, Trafika Europe, Ana, Nashville Review, Exchanges, Neologism, Poems In Translation, Bombay Review, Pictura Journal, Blue Unicorn, Merion West, Reverie, Viridine Library, Rumen, Soul, Last Leaves Review, Lover’s Eye Press, Miserere Review, Consequence Forum, Jerry Jazz Musician and Antifa Literary Review. Before retirement, Brinkley taught literature at the University of Maine. He is the editor (with Keith Hanley) of Romantic Revisions. He is the author of Stalin’s Eyes and Gomorrah. A chapbook – America, America – and a book of images – Icons of War – will be forthcoming in the next few months.