Dream Corpse
after Mark Strand
A train runs over me every night. The same train always, her name Santa Fe peeling from her side.
Bone white (that’s white like death, not like the moon), my face is still intact when the
conductor leans down to whisper railcars of words into my right ear, words that intimate, but do not say, I
deserved this. My right ear because I took the train on my side, faced it, looked it in its two bright
eyes and said, at once, hello, goodbye. The conductor, whose face wavers now, is too young
for this. I apologize to each of his freckles, to each of his coming nights. I would have him stay, but let him
go. And that, too, is apology. This one will not leave me though. He has found my hand, my broken
hand, to clutch. It is a mash of things held and un-held. As it fades out, it tries to remember,
it fixes and re-fixes, coffee mug, knife handle, banister, other hand other hand other hand
jam. Other hand, I know, is already far away. The conductor feels the flailing and starts to sing me
keepsakes. This is always the gift given at the last, this clutching, this singing, this hush and
listen please. This settle, this soften, this beside me on his knees. He croons away the many times I
mistook the water for the blood. Look, look here. This is your blood. Red, even in the dark,
not just a nebulous wetness, but red, even with my eyes closed. I feel what seems like wind rushing
over what is left of skin. The conductor is carrying me, me, trembling core, down streets I know,
past houses whose histories I’ve memorized. Block by block his steps unsew the faded
quilt of neighborhood, of ruined long ago. Why does he make me move? This is sign language for
rescue, a sign he cannot make alone. When you bleed out, I promise this, you will be carried home. He
stops at the edge of my mother’s broken flower bed. The iris, just now in bloom, the wilted
tangle of daylilies a month past peak, the rose bush that will be coy yet for a few more weeks. He lays me
underneath the tree whose branches mother tipped with blue glass bottles. He leaves me then, a
vagrant in my own backyard, to finish this beneath the tree. To finish this, to find the place where it
will end, to will the end underneath the kitchen window, to feel the wind, to mimic it with my own
expiring. I, too, would look away from this, would ask to be excused, and so I settle on his
youth as the reason for his loping step that carries him from this night to another, that couldn’t
zero in on this moment, that couldn’t bear to watch my quick passage from heavy to hover.
after Mark Strand
A train runs over me every night. The same train always, her name Santa Fe peeling from her side.
Bone white (that’s white like death, not like the moon), my face is still intact when the
conductor leans down to whisper railcars of words into my right ear, words that intimate, but do not say, I
deserved this. My right ear because I took the train on my side, faced it, looked it in its two bright
eyes and said, at once, hello, goodbye. The conductor, whose face wavers now, is too young
for this. I apologize to each of his freckles, to each of his coming nights. I would have him stay, but let him
go. And that, too, is apology. This one will not leave me though. He has found my hand, my broken
hand, to clutch. It is a mash of things held and un-held. As it fades out, it tries to remember,
it fixes and re-fixes, coffee mug, knife handle, banister, other hand other hand other hand
jam. Other hand, I know, is already far away. The conductor feels the flailing and starts to sing me
keepsakes. This is always the gift given at the last, this clutching, this singing, this hush and
listen please. This settle, this soften, this beside me on his knees. He croons away the many times I
mistook the water for the blood. Look, look here. This is your blood. Red, even in the dark,
not just a nebulous wetness, but red, even with my eyes closed. I feel what seems like wind rushing
over what is left of skin. The conductor is carrying me, me, trembling core, down streets I know,
past houses whose histories I’ve memorized. Block by block his steps unsew the faded
quilt of neighborhood, of ruined long ago. Why does he make me move? This is sign language for
rescue, a sign he cannot make alone. When you bleed out, I promise this, you will be carried home. He
stops at the edge of my mother’s broken flower bed. The iris, just now in bloom, the wilted
tangle of daylilies a month past peak, the rose bush that will be coy yet for a few more weeks. He lays me
underneath the tree whose branches mother tipped with blue glass bottles. He leaves me then, a
vagrant in my own backyard, to finish this beneath the tree. To finish this, to find the place where it
will end, to will the end underneath the kitchen window, to feel the wind, to mimic it with my own
expiring. I, too, would look away from this, would ask to be excused, and so I settle on his
youth as the reason for his loping step that carries him from this night to another, that couldn’t
zero in on this moment, that couldn’t bear to watch my quick passage from heavy to hover.
Anna Finn is a PhD candidate in English at the University of California Irvine. Her critical work explores experimental prosody in Victorian and modernist poetry. Her work has appeared in BOXCAR, Poetry Review and the Nashville Review.