From Paris to Madrid is a winding coil of train tracks and engines, the much machineried world etched into hillside and valley. Subway clatter and airplane contrails. You can get from here to there in a few hours. And you do—and when you step off the train, holding your hat onto your head, you’ve become an anachronism. You’re looking for the old world, to be swept up in it all, the turning of the centuries. You fan yourself with your hand, pick up your suitcase, and step off the station onto cobblestone. Who do you think you’ve come here to be? The echo of your shoes on the road is the racket of gunshots fired off in celebration of your arrival.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 15, Issue 4.
Jen Town’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Mid-American Review, Cimarron Review, Epoch, Third Coast, Iron Horse Literary Review, Lake Effect, The Literary Review, The Spoon River Review, Prick of the Spindle and others. She earned her MFA in Poetry from The Ohio State University in 2008. She was a semi-finalist for the Perugia Press Award in 2012.
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