Mark Prudowsky

Love on Train Number Two

Seated across the aisle  
an old man with a red face
and two eyeballs rolled back in their sockets
says: He's awful bad in pain, meaning
the dog who guides him, its hips.
Behind him, a preacher woman,
speaks in a tongue dry as unleavened bread.
Beside her, a man with bedroom eyes
translates: In the wilderness shall ye seek
to love and never unite.
At the tail end of each phrase,
preacher woman draws in quick breath.
The air filling her breast
and the sounds leaving it,
like two bellows plates, hinged.
Train Number Two rides two iron rails.
They run on forever and ever
side by side, never touching.

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