VIA Rail Valediction
By Jesse Patrick Ferguson
Leaving you is a Christmas card paper cut,
he says. Parting is such a lame wheelbarrow,
that I’ll push through vastness till it be narrow.
But leave your lead paint
test kit in the hope chest:
I’ll never recall these words.
Then, worrying a button, she:
take me with you like a plastic pellet
in your mashed potatoes,
like everlasting swallowed bubble gum,
a stowaway asbestos fibre.
The coming train hoots like a sitcom
audience detecting innuendo. His palm
smudges his ticket’s ink
to a semblance of the Shroud of Turin.
Discarded sweet wrappers tremble
like the flames of votive candles.
And with ardour he replies:
Oh my stretched fibre optic vocal cords
lie under mountains of your love
for your love, and each postcard stamp
will be a hot brand on the virgin flesh
of my fidelity. If I could,
I’d toss this suitcase like a suicide
on the tracks and drown my watch
in the rain barrel.
During the controlled stop, thus she:
My eye. The dust in my eye. May your hours
have wheels, and may they be choked
and seized by the dust in these eyes.
Then together: I know. I know. Goodbye.
Jesse Patrick Ferguson would like you to throw your hands in the air.
Published On: June 30, 2009
Permanent Location: http://www.forgetmagazine.com/090630a.htm
|
