Three Poems – Calvin Fantone

 

THE THING ABOUT FALLING IN LOVE WITH ONCOMING TRAINS

It is not the tracks and their muted shine, not the gate
in its sluggish descent, or the warning bell’s battered song.

It isn’t the sweet blindness of night, city lights swallowed
by the dark’s eager mouth, the wind drilling its secrets

through your bones, no. It’s the shrill friction of wheels
attempting to rewrite the inevitable crash, the conductor’s

frantic scramble for control. This is what drives you
forward. Not the whiskey and its gasoline anthems

tearing through blood vessels, its ugly shade of red
branching across your skin. Not the swimming pool

of pills behind your eyelids either, those elegant chemicals
rearranging everything. There is no more space inside you

for all that sickness, all that patient sinking. It’s the longing
to be dressed in the wreckage like it’s Sunday’s best outfit,

it’s the silence lodged in your withered throat. Your body
bracing for impact and travel, your body lusting for distance.