Switching Station
By Meg Smith

The train is your indifferent god, like it or not.
Everyone wants to lie down on the tracks
at least once, because no other skeleton­bed
will suffice.
The proof is here
a cat in two testaments,
one on each side of the rail.
The train is your indifferent god,
half­snake, half­cyclops,
accepting any offering:
pennies, stalled cars at the crossing,
drunks walking as if at the bottom of a lake.
All for the one who demands nothing.
No bad movies about its cargo,
no folk songs about its ghosts.
And all the time, it moves
and demands nothing,
moves and demands nothing.

Meg Smith lives in Lowell, Mass. Her poetry has appeared or will appear in Pudding, The Café Review, Vyü, Pulse, Gothic.net, Dreams of Decadence, The Bridge Review, Pegasus. and others. She works as a newspaper and is a 2000 first-place honoree of the New England Press Association. She is a member of the board of directors of the Lowell Celebrates Kerouac! festival. An Oriental dancer, she has performed throughout New England, and is a staff writer for Jareeda, a trade magazine of Middle Eastern dance.