the girl who was a foal that left the paddock without leave

The shuteye of freight. / Jackfruit and tyres, containers and the blast / Of the boxcar
horn sounding another stage. / Four monthly trains / So goodbye to charity
and cuppings of steam / A rusted line in red dust is still / But still runs north / Toward
the teary edge of another glass-knot sun / Casting shadows of the beaten sleepers /
Strutting the rooves as well as the tracks. / Imagine that to be beaten is / To dream
of falling and / To wake because you’re falling toward rails / Or falling half a continent
for the third time in the back / Of a van / Hashed through penumbral window grates. /
Unarrived and bud smoke / The high risk of glue and I promise / I’m also convinced
by the dream / Of a city of girders, steel, and work / But whenever I hear
the strangled crow of cocks over the concrete topped with broken glass / Or pass
the roadkill buck at the bore-hole road-end / I remember the voice of / A guy we called
Jamal explaining / What the most dangerous thing about Mexico is / The time
we visited the lip of the desert / Expecting to find it the colour of haemoglobin /
But instead found bouquets of bundled possessions //

 
 
Patrick Romero McCafferty (he/him) is a Mexican-Scottish poet. His work, which currently considers climates of insecurity and aspects of bicultural experience, has appeared recently or is forthcoming in Magma, Stand, Poetry Scotland, and Gutter. His poem ‘Square Wheels’ was Bella Caledonia Poem of the Week. He edits Wet Grain.