magnetic seats1 James Cervantes
Magnetic Express

The conveyance is empty when it begins after a station break
and also very quiet, except for seats that squeak with motion.

Great murals slide by eyeless windows and windowless eyes;
wide, deep vistas of a million lives open up without a shock.

All seats are adjustable, aisles are as sand is to water,
the music like time itself. Headrests dream attainable dreams.

When newspapers spread out like that, they are as wings,
or just one newspaper in a fly's eye, multiple and unread.

Announcements: all true. For how could Vinedale be anything
other than Vinedale, its distance constant despite the speed?

One stop, two stops, three stops, stops all along the way,
even the beginning and the end are stops along this way.

Best thought of as Magnetic Express that flutters fearlessly
around a single polarity, it moves a whole city into a nation.

Should disaster befall it with the grace of one falling body,
the anaesthetic of mass and consensus will comfort it.