Though it is full October,
we pry open the train window.
The trees are nearly leafless,
a bare ribcage over the railway.
On the shaky window tray,
I try to write about you
veins of circulatory thought
in train-patterned scribbles
heartbeat graphs within words,
spilling visual palpitations —
I’m terrified of what I do not feel.
We break from the forest
into browning fields.
I hold my pen lightly,
it drags and leaps in blue
as the engine’s churning draws
mountains between words.
Oracle Smoke Machine, Christianne's art-and-poetry collaboration with painter Stephen Proski, is out with Staircase Books (Cambridge, MA).