Invitation If your heart is beautiful, behold my baby dressed in ice. Watch angels in their little boxes ready for silence. Futility A train arrives. A city is dead. Emptiness You are here & nothing is with you. What do you have? The trainmaster asks again. Nothing, the women chorus, turning from the light. Sacrifice What is worship if not the desire to offer yourself to the fire & everything you have ever loved? A train beneath the mercy of fire cuts through a small village sleeping in ashes. A train beneath the mercy of fire becomes a burnt offering. There is sacrifice in every city. The women at the station reject the beauty of God. Darkness The rest of the mothers after the holocaust wait for God in the grass, invisible. One of them watches the banishment of butterflies from the city. She hides her child like a family secret. Stay here, she says. The world is not ready for you. Cataloging In this poem, I want to tell you the train is the child beneath the mercy of fire. Loss There is silence in every poem & that is what terrifies me. Where the blood spills, a mother reaches out to a departing train. Expiration Is this the end of your road, Little Train?
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