Train Country


Leaving hard Bronx pavement behind,

we sallied across an iron trestle bridge,

its girders, a lace mantilla casting shadows

over a chorus of arrow-headed pines

black against the sky. We chimed in

as we descended weedy,

wooden steps into Oak Point Yard

where, in overalls and denim cap,

Dad, a car knocker, ebonized by grease, secured

the locomotive’s pistons, bolts, and screws.

Later, in the parked caboose, prickly roses

hugging her door, we sipped tea

next to the pot-bellied stove as Dad devoured

the roast turkey on whole wheat.

When the seven o’clock to Naugatuck screeched

like a banshee, we ran to greet her,

so close she singed our brows. She snorted

smoke, kicked up pebbles, spat rust. That night

even honeysuckle was drunk on its own

perfume, and we had hope, the kind of hope that

flies on silent wings over the lost

boys under street lamps coiling

rings of smoke up to heaven.





The Lady of Annie B Street is Gone



Ninety-five-year-old Nellie Mulligan,

an amber-eyed munchkin,

outspoke her preacher husband

by fifteen hundred Sundays. Still dead-

heading her portulaca and roasting

green peppers from her garden

until her hard-of-hearing son

whisked her from under the canopy

of copper beech, each planted at the birth

of a child. He sold her helter-skelter house

the walls still battle-ship green,

their holes stuffed with Wrigley’s.

Then he died six months later

leaving Nellie rudderless. Shipped

to a nursing home where she pined

for sea gulls shrieking,

her starched sails fluttered

flimsily as silk.





Ordinary Things  New York, 1942



He smooths the brim of his grey fedora

and hands Mr. Mulligan three crisp twenties,

a ten and a five for the white pine box.

I will carry it myself, he says.

And he does, to the bedroom where

the boy dressed in his cotton suit

lies on mother’s crocheted bedspread.

He places the body in the satin-lining

like he was laying out Sunday clothes,

sets a tiny prayer book in his broken fingers,

on its cover "Jesus suffering

the little children to come unto Him."

He tucks a cat’s eye marble and a red hot

in his vest pocket and stares at him,

then opens the window so he can

taste the bitter air and hear

the flutter of crisp dotted-Swiss.

A four-time Pushcart nominee, Liz
has published poems, memoir and
short stories in New Delta Review,
Rattle, Harp Weaver, The Cortland
Review, Illuminations, Prism
International Quarterly, Philadelphia
Stories and Natural Bridge, among
others. A Delaware Division of the
Arts fellowship winner, her work in
Mudlark was chosen for The Best of
the Web by Web Del Sol. She serves
on the poetry board of Philadelphia
Stories and she was also selected as
a finalist in "The Art Of Storytelling
Contest" by the DE Museum of Art.
She is most proud of the offsite
school she ran in The Bronx and her
eight grand children who live on the
next block in Rehoboth and who
keep her young.
Liz Dolan