We’ve gathered at the railway.
Our nerve endings have faded, the gamut of our sensations become just two poles, yes or no: Can you feel that?
No. Not much anymore, said while testing a point against the pillow of thumb, of palm, against corded wrists. Glass to skin. Needle to skin. The way flesh puckers before it’s punctured. But nothing coursing beneath it: a riverbed of fissured earth.
We’re waiting on the tracks that skirt Bangkok. The rhythm on the rails is a heartbeat and it pummels through us. We lay on the ground to better catch the pounding, the low moan of a horn. We stand with backs stretched, shudder pleasantly like a man urinating. We hum train songs, skip on the crossties, stack gravel into mausoleums for diminutive kings. We are listless, parched, and waiting for the arrival, finally, of a man who comes tripping across the dawn expanse. Distant roosters rouse the moment. A nursery rhyme ripples through us:
Make way! Give way! How many birds can we feed today?
received awards from the Poetry Foundation and the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts. Her work has appeared in Poetry Magazine, The Journal, Rattle, and others. She is a VONA alumna, a Project VOICE teaching artist, and a member of the Dark Noise Collective.