The Station in Summer

I passed a herd of Jersey cows,
And the entrechat of early calves,
Their braiding bounds
Mirrored the skirling summer call
Of the spotted sandpiper,
And its silhouetted dance

Above the wetlands that separate two fields,
And the white breasted bird sang,
Its orange bill, a simile for light,
Its spotted breast, auguring new love.
I too thought of love,
But in a rattling cage of paneled steel,

And soon we left behind the clamor of cattle
Of birds, and wind-shook long grass,
To know, instead, the caterwauling friction
Of metal clamps slamming rubber-wrapped iron:
Phantom cinders of stale air,
Wheels grinding to a halt.

We slowed into the station, lurching once
Before we stopped, and I saw murmurations
Of dreams, on sun-beaten brows,
An array of color, too, signifying the season:
Short hemlines, white shoes, and tight skirts,
A libretto of hunger, under a beating sun.

Artwork by Ekaterina Palesskaya

Oisín Breen is an Irish poet, academic, and journalist. His debut, Flowers, all sorts in blossom …, was released in March 2020. Breen is published in 90 journals in 19 countries, such as About Place, Door is a Jar, Northern Gravy, North Dakota Quarterly, Books Ireland, The Tahoma Literary Review, La Piccioletta Barca, Decomp, and New Critique. Breen’s second collection 4² by 5 is due out later this summer through Dreich. His third, the experimental Lilies on the Deathbed of Étaín, will be published by Beir Bua Press in January 2023. Find him on Twitter @Breen

Ekaterina Palesskaya is an artist based in St. Petersburg, Russia. She studies a lot of realist art and often uses surrealism for self-expression. Palesskaya prefers working with oils but also uses other media like watercolors and ink on paper. Find her on Instagram @keke_93_ and @keke_ax