Friday, January 13, 2012

"The Night Train"

I don't live in a great section of town. Rust-eaten Caddys bottom out in potholes. Street-corner peddlers proffer pharmaceuticals. Advertisements never tout refurbished rentals. My building, largely vacant, is all crumbling plaster, peeling paint, spotted carpet. Then there's the train, roaring by twice an hour mere yards away, sounding like some massive, antediluvian thing.

The oldtimers say you get used to it. But I'm searching the classifieds. Yesterday, I woke at 3 a.m. to the train-whistle's wail, a howl splitting the night. And I swear I heard, from deep in the tenement's bowels, an answering cry rise to meet it.

Postscript: To listen to audio of this and other stories, please download Season One of the I Saw Lightning Fall podcast here.

4 comments:

Jackie Jordan said...

Poverty, by all rights, is derivative of the capitalist condition. Jeremiah exclaimed, “Tomorrow. Tomorrow will be better.” Baseless, ethereal dreams prevail, in lieu of scratching a meager existence from the dry earth. Tomorrow’s dreams never come for the wanton souls without two nickels to rub together. Trump said to a reporter, seeing a newspaper covered vagrant lying on a bench, “Do you see that man? He’s richer than I am. I’m $100,000,000 in debt and he’s simply broke.” So amusing!

Loren Eaton said...

Don't get an MBA student like me talking about economics, Jackie! It will become a boring conversation indeed.

Jackie Jordan said...

Sorry, Loren. I am trying to coalesce and remain on point with the themes of the stories, which are truly wonderful, but sometimes my Tourretes is overpowering... Just yesterday, just had a story pulled from Tenlegs for being too poignant.[smiles]

Loren Eaton said...

No problem, sir! I just really like economics, but I find that it bores most people when I talk about it here. Comment as much as you like.