From a Train by Lynn Emanuel

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend October 31, 2016   From a Train   Lynn Emanuel

After night's black abandoned truck— morning is locked down tight,   and the sky's brewing up some trouble.   So far at the bottom of this moment, she could fall off.   Coat hem. A pair of sultry shoes. She is five.   Small for her age. Meeting her father for the first   time. Union Station. Denver. Behind the harsh horizon   beyond the tracks, a dark wildness over the swing set,   brick yard, development.   Little nowhere, where Did you come from?   The train roams through the gone and vanquished,   some pale, soft voice talking. Spooks. Phantoms.   He is the unclosed cut of her.   Find the missing dark scythe. Find   the jawbone of an ass. Dead wood, cemetery, oil vat   shooed away—harried— by the train's advance.   First this, then that, then a thrush's three notes happen   all at once at once at once   and a figure in a red hat.            Copyright © 2016 Lynn Emanuel. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   "Wordsworth describes a poem as something half remembered, half invented, which this one is. Since I have a very bad memory, I was able to use the images from a recent train trip to Rhode Island as a means of extending and embedding the brief, odd story of meeting my father for the first time, which did indeed happen in a train station." —Lynn Emanuel   Lynn Emanuel is the author of The Nerve of It: Poems New and Selected (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015).  She divides her time between Pittsburgh and New York City.   Photo credit: Heather Kresge  Poetry by Emanuel   The Nerve of It: Poems New and Selected (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015)  "Hymn to the Neck" by Amy Gerstler "Not Nothing" by Kimiko Hahn "To a Young Girl at a Window" by Margaret Widdemer Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038