White Spot, Black Smoke
The carriage spat me out.
Heat puckered loose tiles,
raised grit to bite my shoe.
Snow sealed the oily seams.
Platform glass ticked. A hairline ran.
Late for the change at Central.
I ground the cigarette in my palm,
kept the pain a coal I could pocket.
A click under my heel
pulled me back, the neighbor’s toy trestle,
rails sprung, the lash of coupling slack.
A whistle cut the air; the clock replied.
Yard-lights came on in the old layout.
The carriage exhaled black smoke, took my seat.
Grit lifted in its wake. I swallowed it,
thumbed the stub out, went to my knees,
crawled toward the white circle ahead,
the headlamp pooling on ice.
In the hard white quiet,
the ice gave back my face in soot,
flattened to gloss as it thawed.
I wiped with my sleeve, coarse wool.
Black came up on the cuff. The oval stayed,
a lens around the crack, a track
still traveling under the light.
The white spot thinned, then thinned again.
Sean Wang is a PhD student. His poems appear or are forthcoming in West Trade Review, wildscape literary journal, Wild Roof Journal, Stone Poetry Quarterly, Pictura Journal, ONE ART, and Open: Journal of Arts & Letters (O:JA&L), where his work was selected for the Broadside Series, among others. He can be found on Instagram at @sean_wang1997.