Poetry Dave Carillo
Toward the Heart of the Abandoned Switchyard
Where falls a cosmos of exhale
Of the quiet still stinging
From the recollection of states left behind
Where hunched on crickets’ legs
Dream the freight engines
That hauled the bone
From nurseries to gold mines
Still breathing their dust
Hacking & scattering
Their dust
& your eyes won’t shut through it all
You can’t shake it from your skin
So you wait in the guts
Of the burned-out signal office
Feeling the last blue flickers
Of memory thorned along your back
By the twitching beasts of undone wire
Until you no longer believe
You are yourself
& outside again
Your waking steps startle
Strange birds roosting on black cable
They cry
Meteor shower
You hear them spinning coppery nests
From machinery splinters
& they take off electric
As you walk past
& land quiet as gage needles
In the path you clear
& you go there
Light as soot
Dave Carillo teaches English at the University of Connecticut at Waterbury and is the Writing Coordinator at Saint Joseph College. He lives in West Hartford, CT with his wife and dog.
