I surrender, dear.
This locomotive is on fire.
Meet me at the riverside,
’round midnight, or in Tokyo
where the chimneys are green
and the monks, alone with their hair
shirts and dark desires
dream of life on easy street.
We’ll populate our world
with comfortable furniture, glasses
full to the brim, and raise four
for Miles and Bird. Life is a chain
of consequences, a song
you find yourself riffing on
as you go, bending notes, sliding in
and out of key — the major, the minor,
the flatted 7ths — all the colors
that kaleidoscope this dream
we keep dreaming, this boogie-woogie,
bebop life, this runaway train.
—Jason Irwin
Jason Irwin is the author of A Blister of Stars (Low Ghost, 2016); Watering the Dead (Pavement Saw Press, 2008), winner of the Transcontinental Poetry Award; and the chapbooks Where You Are (Night Ballet Press, 2014) and Some Days It's A Love Story (Slipstream Press, 2005). He grew up in Dunkirk, N.Y., and now lives in Edgewood.
