The way some people reacted
to that mysterious train station,
you would think they were just finding
out this town isn’t resting on a flat universe.

No one knows where it came from.
No one on the city council is talking.
No one wants to talk about the sobbing mess
the mayor has become.

If this were 1940,
and only a few think it is,
the train station would be a modern marvel.

Anyway,
public response remains divided.

Drop by the Laundromat,
the strip club, the haunted house,
the Arnold Camp Memorial Literature Museum,
the busted-ass traveling show,
the McDonalds, or the ongoing football game,
and you’re going to find dwindling support for daily life.

Those railroad tracks shine during the hotter days,
but you can’t really appreciate that,
without disturbing the bodies resting in the center,
or the tents that sprung up all around it in mere hours.

Rumors and arguments about when the schedule will start
has become the kind of religion that distrusts more
than ten minutes of sleep a week.

Bunch of others bought cars, stole cars,
built borderline impossible motorcycles,
begged for rides,
and just took off for lost places with weird names.

Six small piles of salt are still there,
four miles outside of town.

Those who stayed are detached,
and irritable,
and making do.

Valentine’s Day isn’t going to be
the shock show it usually is.

08/19/2013

Posted on 08/19/2013
Copyright © 2024 Gabriel Ricard