On The 7-Something to Penn Station.

On The 7-Something to Penn Station

   We walk up to the station. Kids already there
   snack on the platform, half-eaten morning pastry
   in their hands, school-bags all over. My kid taps me
   with a stick-on earring squeezed onto a toothpaste cap
   she finds between the train seats. Says it's a thimble,
   says to make sure it doesn't get lost. It's important.
   I start to tell her the truth but say sure, give it here,
   and quietly lose it. The 7-Something pulls away
   and ratchets east. Sunrise. I keep thinking of her
   not able to sleep last night. Sitting up in her bed
   and trying to count all the stars. The car swivels
   and blinded I see them raised on their fathers' backs.
   Not to be carried to bed. To breathe. Puddled feces
   on the plank floor, stale breath, people saying prayers.
   The box car lurches. There is no place to sit. No toilets,
   so they piss where they are, holding whatever they took,
   dark teddies, fouled dolls. Sitting high up in the dark,
   watching the lights on their retinas. Make-believe stars,
   they count them. They cannot breathe. They cannot sleep.

   --J.T. Barbarese

J.T. Barbarese is the author of "A Very Small World" (Orchises, 2005) and a translation of Euripides, "Children of Herakles. "His fourth book of poems, "The Black Beach," is forthcoming from the University of North Texas Press.