On one side of the tracks you sense the change of scenery: the bones of branches, then the buds, then the tents of summer green. Not so on the other side. There the chainmail bares its dull, metallic ribs on the chest of its coarse and hoary hills. You wake up on a train table among a pride of purring Lionels. You turn the dial on the transformer until the conductor jumps onto the sleepers with a megaphone to warn the world that he is NOT from Nottingham. He effs and blinds to the Plasticville walls, and drops his darts on tracks between windmill and interchange before shuffling off in a huff
Frank William Finney is a poet from Massachusetts. A recipient of The Letter Review Prize for Poetry, his poems have appeared in Brussels Review, Fairfield Scribes, Penn Journal of Arts and Sciences (PJAS), The Paradox Magazine, Route 7 Review, Songs of Eretz Poetry Review, and elsewhere. His chapbook The Folding of the Wings was published in 2022 by Finishing Line Press.