[New-Poetry] All aboard!

[barry seiler]

Hi--

Rough fish is terrific. Who did it pass through on its way to the page?

				Green Windows

This is the fable of our daily going,
This riding westward to Newark,
Sun behind us flashback red,

Before us green windows
Flashing above the Passaic,
Green windows of Mutual Benefit Life.

In my had I hear the Talking Heads,
Al Green’s Take Me to the River.
In the shrunken world everything fits.

Two rows ahead, the one-eyed
Small claims adjuster
Curses the delays. He leans back

Closing his one good eye
And dreams of not deboarding on Broad Street
But following the tracks

Beyond the Oranges, Short Hills, Summit.
Or he dreams he is rising
And floating out of the green windows,

Watching them blazing behind him,
Red and green, and red again,
Like the burning of the frail craft

Of Cortez on the coast of Mexico.






>From: "Skip Fox" <skip at louisiana.edu>
>Reply-To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp;Views" 
><new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
>To: "'NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp;Views'" 
><new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
>Subject: RE: [New-Poetry] All aboard!
>Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2007 14:17:39 -0500
>
>I'm betting Sherwood Anderson would really like this poem. (As I do.)
>
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: new-poetry-bounces at wiz.cath.vt.edu
>[mailto:new-poetry-bounces at wiz.cath.vt.edu] On Behalf Of jforjames at aol.com
>Sent: Tuesday, August 14, 2007 1:48 PM
>To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
>Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] All aboard!
>
>
>
>Rough Fish
>
>
>Under the creosote and rust of a railway trestle,
>three older boys fish for carp. They finish off
>a few cans of beer that one of them snuck out
>of the house, not worried about getting caught,
>because his dad will just think he drank it all last night
>and go buy some more. The only line
>in the water was nibbled clean hours ago,
>but no one pulls it up and checks it. The bait
>smells bad, a stink not easy to wash from your hands.
>This isn't exactly fishing, it's about getting out
>of those sweat-box shotgun houses
>that line the depot road, and lying back in the high weeds
>where it's cool down along the riverbank. Besides,
>the fish really aren't good for eating, full of bones
>and hard to clean, and the heavy metals
>in these waters seem to have made their scales
>thick as hammered armorplate. Some say these rough fish
>grow big as the wrecked Buicks and Dodges
>that you can half-see, submerged, lying off the shallows.
>One of the boys will finish highschool
>and work till he retires at the refinery,
>one will steal cars and do a short stretch
>before he marries a girl who gets him righted,
>one will get hit by a train, having passed out
>unaware of the moonlight shining on the tops of the rails,
>the burnished steel indicating a well-used spur of track.
>For now their life is this one long afternoon, a summer
>without work and a circle of butts on the ground
>like hour marks on a clock of dirt,
>their prospects thin as a lottery ticket
>left in the back pocket of someone's cutoffs,
>a slip of paper and maybe the winning numbers
>melting away when one them gets too hot
>and says he's going in for a swim.
>
>
>
>--
>
>   _____
>
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>


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