Sharon Hoffmann

Living Just Across the Tracks in Kingsville, Texas

 

Don't imagine anything romantic.

No blues songs.

No Midnight Special, no Yellow Dog.

No passenger trains at night. 

No one huddled sideways under a blanket, 

his shoulders rounded in sleep.

No one reading under a thin yellow light.

 

These trains don't seem to come from anywhere.

They move fifty yards forward, fifty back. 

All night I hear them groaning, 

coupling and uncoupling,

the engine building up speed, 

crashing into cars, the cars rolling back.

This goes on for hours. 

I can't decide if I'm being driven crazy.

Some nights I think I like the noise.

 

I get up in the dark to go to work,

and the empty cars – not even moving now – 

still block the road. 

I have to drive the long way around.

 

Sharon Hoffmann is a writer based in Atlantic Beach, Florida. Publications (past and forthcoming) include The Hooghly Review, New York Quarterly, Beloit Poetry Journal, Alice Walker: Critical Perspectives (Harvard University Press), Magazine1, Paddler Press, South Florida Poetry Journal, BURIAL, City Wide Lunch, Wild Roof, Sho Poetry Journal, Blood+Honey, and other magazines. Awards include fellowships from Atlantic Center for the Arts and Florida’s Division of Cultural Affairs, three Pushcart nominations and a nomination for Best Spiritual Literature.