96. Smoking on the Railroad

featured in Calliope Magazine’s Fall 2017 edition.

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Francine Hope
And I myself
At the blinking, dinging
Railroad Crossing
With hands in our pockets,
Our hoodies zipped up.
We pace back and forth
‘Long the tracks
In the Fall.

With a puff of smoke
From the cold and a joint,
Francine began
Complaining a point
That

“Some folks go wastin’
Their lives away,
You know?
Sittin’ on their asses
Waitin’ for something good
To happen when they don’t make no-
Thin’ but trouble.
And then they give in
To depression and shit
When their life don’t get great
From only doin’ things that
Make ‘em happy
For a little bit
All the time.
You know?”

I knew
As I slurped up the nicotine
From my cigarette,
Bitter and burning and black
Like that sulfurous smokestack from Hell,
Coughing three times for good measure,
That I didn’t know
What the Hell she was talking about.

And I reckon
She didn’t neither.

What I do know
Is I’m pissed
That my ass is freezin’
For forgetting the reason
Why we’re standing here wheezin’
At this Railroad Crossing
Where the train doesn’t stop,
But passes on by.

We’ve been here, smoking,
For damn near six hours
And I have yet to see
One Goddamned train.

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