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DEDICATED TO

THE ONE I LOVE

by Lauren Clark

The train reaches my station.

It stops, then moves forward.

 

No one stops me not moving.  

Then familiar five-and-dime

 

blurs into water tower blurs

into dark fields beyond glass.  

 

They cannot kick me off until

Toledo at least, where every

 

one will rise from sleep and

go to smoke on the platform

 

except me, except the other

steadily unconscious bodies

 

of passengers.  My stop has

gone.  It cannot come back.

 

Even if they catch me I will

not disembark, not without

 

a fistfight.   I haven’t changed

my underwear in three days.  

 

If you could love me still

I would know by now.

Lauren Clark holds an MFA in Poetry from the University of Michigan and works as Program & Development Coordinator at Poets House in New York City.  Their first collection of poems, Music for a Wedding, was selected by Vijay Seshadri for the 2016 AWP Donald Hall Prize in Poetry and will be published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in 2017. See more at www.laurclar.com.

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