El Platform Communion

Morse St. Station, before dawn.  
Smoking a joint, sipping the beer
I packed in my knapsack.
Bitter. A trains pass. No B trains arrive. Or
Is it B trains I’m waiting for? Was it Howard Street?
No. Howard is all stops. The lost of the world
Have to end or begin at Howard Street.  

Like stars, the lights of the distant platform.  
Steel and concrete: that particular grip they have on cold.
Shoes already soaked by—not snow anymore— 
Something brown and dirty from tires and tramps
Of feet crowding into the rush to morning factories.

Steel and concrete is where I’m heading—
All I’d hoped for. The stinking blue coolant
Protecting steel parts from the heat of carbide drills.
Concrete under the thin-soled, steel-toed shoes.
The dirty jokes at 3:00, just before we wipe the chips
From our machines. Jokes are all that save us—
That exquisite transition between end of shift 
And drinking time.

But for now, I’m standing on concrete
Enveloped in the comfort of cigarette and marijuana smoke.
Tiny lights glint off the steel rails and Plexiglass 
Guarding the advertisement signs. These few minutes
Of solitary hallucination. One pigeon cooing.

DEBBIE K. TRANTOW

Debbie K. Trantow received her MFA from the University of Minnesota and was awarded the 2001 Gesell Summer Writing Fellowship. Her chapbook Hearing Turtle’s Words was published by Spoon River Poetry Press. She has been published in Gertrude, The North Coast Review, The Wisconsin Review, and other literary magazines and journals.