Training

 

My cousin grips my shoulders near train tracks

between two walls of granite gneiss.

The approaching train, the horn,

my cousin’s penny on a shiver of silver rail—

how he twists the slip

of my T-shirt in his fist, yanking as if

to throw me between creosote-treated crossties. 

The train roars past, so close our hair 

leaps like switchgrass beyond

the track ballast. My tears. My terror.

The penny flattened, smoothed wide.

The train fades down the track; 

my cousin laughs, picks up the coin, presses

it to my wet cheek, his hot breath 

in my ear, whispering, Scared? 

So many years later, I feel its copper warmth.

​

​

Tinnitus

​​

I’ve seen postcards

from the inner ears and know

their minotaur ways—

conches of memory,

curls of regret.

And always, hidden

in the tangled bulrushes of time,

the lonesome ding

of a tiny bell from

my old tricycle’s handlebar,

the grass-bending rush

of March winds across

winter-dead meadows,

the hot breath of first love

whispering down

the wishing well

of my 7th-grade ear:

I like you. I like you a lot.

​

 

 

 

 

Ken Craft teaches at York County Community College in Maine. His poetry has appeared in Pushcart Prize XLIX, The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor, The Pedestal, Spillway, and numerous other journals and e-zines. He is the author of three poetry collections, most recently Reincarnation & Other Stimulants.