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**PRINT: A LITTLE MONEY DOWN, by Doug Milam, is No. 27 in our broadsheet series and marks our 8th anniversary. Milam's a frequent contributor and wizard of experimentally styled prose that still burns bright around the campire -- this issue comes with a new design, an excerpt from Susannah Felts' first novel **WEB: TRAIN Senesequore
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TRAIN
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Senesequore
Based in Smithfield, N.C., east of Raleigh, Senesequore is a freelance writer and sometime marketer for a small publisher. Visit her blog here.
Train's rolling slowly by. The smell of shit lingers in the air like the fog outside in the darkness. It becomes less and less, though I realize that means it's becoming more and more me.
Train speeds up. Nothing but shadows of trees racing past. Moon's still bright. Shadow of my hand against the paper makes it hard to write. Bumps on the tracks make it easier.…
Earlier today, waiting in the car in a parking lot, little dragonflies pitch on the windshield wipers, then take flight... Teasing me with flight, like they know somehow the air will lift them, but they doubt how high they can go.
I wonder if the train's met any dragonflies tonight... breaking them like tail lights. Or maybe they would break the train like an ocean wave, long before it makes it to shore....
Trains are like life. There might be stops, delays. But we've all got a destination to get to. Whatever comes at you, you either have to kill it, or kill yourself trying not to.
I derailed months ago, my wreckage the same density as the cargo I carried. But I'm still alive. And there are angels and demons, children, fathers, mothers all along my spine, traveling through tunnel after tunnel, barely waking to the fact that the light they're chasing after is the projection of their own.
The writer in me still feels like a drudge, trudging through rainy crowded city streets, or burning cigarette holes in my words. But I don't smoke. The musical or otherwise artistic part of me is something beautiful but always behind a shroud. I'm not a Muslim. The unholy part of me just wants to lose myself in every part of what I'm not even allowed to explore. And the holy part wants the same....
Feels like I'm alone on the train. Everyone around me, sleeping. Quiet talking muffled in the background, a baby crying softly. I wonder how many of these people are running, how many of them are going... how many are just engines waiting to explode.
People are waking up now. I'm falling asleep.
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