Pandrol Jackson
By T. R. Hummer
Along a derelict railroad, abandoned machinery takes
its last tour of duty toward rust. Another town is stalling.
Another house smolders with rot while a television rages.
Crows patrol banked cinders beside a landfill with a sign:
No Dumping. We were Jews in Austria. No, we spoke German
in Czechoslovakia—by order of the Alliance, we filed
Into a railroad car and died. No, we were black in Arkansas.
Here is a filthy contraption, like a grim lawn mower
With flanged iron wheels, Pandrol Jackson in blue paint
on its rotted housing: a rail grinder, used to polish steel
To brilliance, forgotten here as after the Rapture. And the carcass
of a boxcar warps just down the track, groaning with a cargo of bones.
Copyright Credit: T. R. Hummer, "Pandrol Jackson" from Skandalon. Copyright © 2014 by T. R. Hummer. Reprinted by permission of Louisiana State University Press.
Source: Skandalon (Louisiana State University Press, 2014)