Issue Thirty-Two - Summer 2018

From Grey’s Ferry, 1999

By Jim Trainer

I’m not sure that what flared
was regulation or if anyone
was on shift or firewatch
or if that ghost-plume after it
was noxious and deadly
but I caught something so violent,
so malevolent, so
unbelievably man-made
it was like the earth and her blue night
recoiled
it was from the bridge—it jumped
up and wracked the view
a belching yellow tinged with
an angry red
and worst of all
the silence after
reaching in all directions like
a dragon, deathly, slow & sure
the office was dark
those granite colored shacks
like husks against
the coke-still sky
cars kept coming up and over
and so, did I, like I’d done
so many times—
climbed that bridge with the city
giving rise
and then falling back as I’d
continue to ride,
knowing death, desolation,
the industrial skyline, not knowing
anything about how the young idea
could ever survive.

Copyright Trainer 2018

Jim Trainer is a singer-songwriter, journalist, and curator of Going For The Throat—a weekly publication of cynicism, outrage, correspondence and romance. He publishes one collection of poetry and prose every year through Yellow Lark Press. Please visit jimtrainer.net for Take To The Territory, his latest collection, and for music, film and appearances.

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