KIERNAN A gun shot. A pirouetting shadow. Steel wheels rolling on steel rails, rushing not quite smoothly, not silently, over gravel ballast and softwood crossties hewn long ago, then soaked in creosote to form this magic ladder stretching all the way from Penn Station to the city of New Orleans. I do call it magic, the railroad, all 1,377 miles of it. I lie in my narrow upper berth, the sleeper car swaying and jerking side to side beneath me, around me. We’re racing northeast over Lake Pontchartrain not too long past dawn, heading home. Out there, the morning sun has set the estuary on fire, and the white inferno is too bright to look at for more than a few seconds without averting my eyes. There are already (or still) fishermen on the water in their fragile, bobbing boats, casting lines or reeling them in again. How can they drift in the fire? How can anyone bear that heat? I haven’t slept, because it was easier for me to stay awake all night than get up in time to make it to the Union Passenger Terminal on Loyola at six A.M.
What do You think about Fearful Symmetries (2014)?
