M.V. Quinsam Terminal

Stream of Consciousness

by Jill Talbot

 

You said, be good.   I said, always. This was our joke since surely I wasn’t good,

nor did you want me to be.    

 

Suddenly I’m ancient and goodness is so irrelevant. Now on the American train out east, we no longer know what to joke about,

 

only that joking is as tedious as a cat on steroids. I love everyone, the hippie tells me

and I don’t know how to say,

 

I don’t want to be loved by someone who loves everyone; to be loved by someone who hates everyone—that would be impressive. And kilometers to go before I—something.

 

I wanted to tell you the smell was not me, it was the homeless person sleeping

opposite us. But I was afraid I might also say that was once me, so I said nothing.

 

He told me that his pen bled into him as if the pen had done it on purpose. I knew

the feeling so I nodded. But I told you none of this. And god knows what you didn’t tell me.

 

We’re all just keys looking for locks, you said, and I wondered if this were a sexual metaphor or what. Some people have filters they can adjust, mine is always just on or off. Not nearly as funny as I think, funny ha-ha or funny sad like when I laughed until I cried on a book of cats painting.

 

He tells me he is a Scientologist or is it Satanist? All poetry is about death, he said, and something about life being beautiful. I watched it the whole way through,

you said about a poetry video I sent you and I realized that might be as good as it gets.

 

Depending on how you look at it. I’ve been looking at it sideways these days, a friend tells me, like her dog.

 

You always cry at the most inappropriate times, I always laugh at the most inappropriate times. I’m getting my pronouns confused again. This is not a confessional poem since most of it isn’t actually true. We aren’t even on a train—though if you want to be philosophical about it, we’re all on trains, aren’t we?

 

My point was—everyone dies. Not my point exactly,

I just needed a solid conclusion.