transports by e. smith sleigh

   in a cityscape a wailing train whistle echoes
off the buildings and concrete    
it resembles barge horn soundings  
that bounce off the banks    
the islands   the river inlets    the water  
            during the dark of night 

   through the stillness comes   the lonely moan 
of each    the sounds evoke a need to escape    
to flee the agony of misspent time   wrong love   
lost loves   regrets turned into sounds that bound   
from ears to head to heart and back again   
mournful howls invade the body 
            drench cheeks   and prick at veins    

   the wailing is a walk into the piercing  nothingness 
into the sounds’ solitary emptiness    
yowls diminish while the transports move away 
to their distant distances   vanished instances   
within the adieu   their blustery squalls forestalled 
            remain somehow     wailing 

            don’t expect an ending 

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e. smith sleigh poetry appeared or is forthcoming in Paper Darts, Squalorly, Kumquat Poetry, Kaleidoscope, Pankhearst’s Slimline Volume: No Love Lost, PRISM International, The Criterion, Orion, Silver Birch Press,  Five 2 One Magazine, Rat’s Ass Review, Corvus Reviewand elsewhere. 

She won finalist designation in several literary and academic competitions including placement in Eastern Kentucky University’s academic journal Nine Patch: A Creative Journal for Women and Gender Studies.

sleigh authored several poetry collections, a non-fiction book, two novels, and a fictional memoir. She was educated at the universities of Delaware and Michigan, taught at the college level, and traveled extensively. She now lives in Robert Penn Warren country and near a lake where she draws inspiration.