train tracks of finely wrought silver run
across the shores by the black rivers,

shuddering near each other
with calculated blasts of power.

Over the gray dust speed the cars
of the dead; on the far bank she stands and cries

where are you, far from the blue hills
while the children still thrash in the water

a geography I look for now
and cannot conceive,

though fish still explode out of bright clear eggs
in the harbor.

MJ Cunniff is a PhD candidate at Brown writing on modernist and contemporary poetry. They live in Providence, Rhode Island, with a dog statue and a haunted chandelier.