Poetry by Jim Trainer

Bruce Fingerhood CC



JUST PAST SOON

so I came out of the desert
still-hot
to the frozen city
and in its specters of light
and its doom of jazz
I took a room
and a seat by the window
where I wrote of my
invisible woman blues
too late to double back
on my deal with loneliness
I have a suit, a pen, a solitude
that I take with me
into the crowds that parse like birds
into its towering glass and
subterranean rivers
I don’t mind you fingers-past limit
the cacophony of dead whisperers
the heavy petals
blooming back to ground
I don’t even mind I can’t see you
these soaking-gauze nights
and days of pat and obvious triumph
the only thing I can’t get over
about you
is why I’ve reared
back to feral
and keep my pain in a tight packet
I fill the suit
jangle coins
duck a fool’s simple laughter
and skip a stride above
a trodden pride,
I mind simply
terribly
that you’re not here
and I’m gone before I arrive

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Jim Trainer contributes to Substack, served as columnist for Into The Void and blogged at Going For the Throat for over a decade. Trainer publishes one letterpressed collection every year through Yellow Lark Press.  STRIDE is his 8th.  As a progenitor of Stand UpTragedy™ he performs regularly throughout the world.