C. Wade Bentley: “Third Rail”
THIRD RAIL
A woman in a black coat stands
like any other at the edge of the train
platform, though this one stays
while others come and go,
having, perhaps, a particular train
in mind and not liking the look
of any of these, looking, between
arrivals, as far down the tunnel
as the turn. From time to time,
she puts one foot forward,
out over the barrow where the rails
run to all the places she’s already
been, out where the third rail
hums and curls into a curve
like an electric eel—before pulling it
back again when the next train
heaves into station, noisome
as a dragon, letting other humans off
and on, just the one still of two
minds, but entertaining a third.
C. Wade Bentley teaches and writes in Salt Lake City. His poems have been published in journals such as Cimarron Review, Best New Poets, Rattle, Chicago Quarterly Review, Pembroke Magazine, and Poetry Northwest. A full-length collection of his poems, What Is Mine, was published by Aldrich Press in 2015.