caron andregg - four poems


Trains

From such humble places
Great journeys begin
From dirty suburban platforms
Crumbled candy wrappers, spent gum
Yesterdays Financial Times
Used and abandoned 
Like last year's trophy wives
Commuters crowd benches
Grey as grim pavement
Coming and going 
Going and coming
Joyless and bound
500 pound fine for spitting
Towns here remember
TB and Black Plague
Memory is long, here
Ancient carriages
Swinging wooden doors
Sway on track 
Laid by Irish ancestors
Escaping blighted fields
Compartments smell 
Of leather long removed
Of suitcases stuffed with dreams
Of children's fear and wonder
Big engine is going
Past office parks
Past suburban sprawl
Past endless switching tracks 
At Crewe and on 
To everywhere
New choices at each point
Great journey begins


Old Dogs

I had ears like a hound
That first year in Grad school
When we got the wild hare
Ditched class to get married
By a one-handed judge
With Irish eyes
Moonlighting on his lunch break.
Would stand on the balcony 
We paid for with our student loans
Head cocked toward the thruway
Motionless for hours
Could hear the high whine 
Of your engine, distinct
From half a mile.
A dozen years later
With days too full for 
Hours on balconies
Like an old dog
Worries the same bone
The same bone 
My ears strain to hear 
The sound of your car
Coming home.


Havoc

Screaming down 
Mulholland in the 
Dead 
Of night 
Doing 90 
With the lights off

Thousand
	Yard 
		Stare
With the 
Brutal 
Clarity of vision 
That comes only 
From a night of 

Deep 
	Irish 
		Whiskey.  
Lane changing at high speed 
Like a dancer 
Floats a complicated

Step-
	Ball-
		Change 
Leading from the hip.
Four-wheel drifting 
Through each curve 
Just to 

Feel 
	The blood 
			Rush.
And if I 
Live 
Through the night 
I will fuck you 
Mad 
At dawn 
And send you off 
To wage-slave 



Wet 
	And 
		Dazed
And you'll remember 
Then 
Why you tolerate
My absences
Why you quietly 
Accept 
The wild and manic 

	Havoc 

In 
	My 
		Eyes.


Invisible Ink

I'll dip my pen in lemon and write on rice paper
to transcribe this want beyond words

wrestle indelible impulses into coded lines
wet on white, like children share secrets

caged phrases on a small sheet of magic
released by the heat of your hands

you who wait while I act, the object 
of my verbs, direct and transitive

conjugated blood to blood, lip to lip
without need for words at all.

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