Trains

Low rumbling subway like a basement furnace, lights in the tunnels spread out twenty  
meters apart - illuminated by periods the dull spread out faces, absorbed and some maybe
consumed by the furnace rumbling low the train and the train wheels and rails screech 
against each other before periods of standstill like a drone or rumbling lights the electric 
drone at points of quiet in the empty stations, but now and then there's this low moaning 
from an old woman, a mantra, a long grunt as steady sometimes as the flashes of passing 
lights in a rise and fall half as fast and low it rolls on, her face is red blistered leather, 
broad nose like a sack.  The moan continues in a dog whine, unintelligible, unfinished


josh buermann © 1999