Long Train Running
Fernando Esteban Flores
August 2, 2026
Sometimes they slashed the barrio
like a switchblade gash of scribbled notes
spilling across the clear page of space
Hasty messages posted over sheets of air
Sometimes they hobbled like drunken winos
sidelong down the tracks
We’d wing rocks
just to hear thwack & zing
hymn of the inhospitable hour
Certain times they paced with such clarity
you can still see the conductor’s cool smile
Wave then wave back
to hoot or honk
Once we jumped an empty Santa Fe car
rocking, bucking
jumped right off
At twenty miles per hour
it was rush enough
Many times we’d look
for special boxcars
marked with soul signs
Bums & tramps sketched
on rusted glare of steel
black cat’s whiskered face
smiling pig in pink
cracked heart crashing
down in flaming wings
eerie-eyed clown
rusty postcards
squelch & squeal of better times
What did we know of the Pacific
but Union Southern & Missouri
The ocean deserts away from where we stood
Atlases on wheels heading south
Chihuahua Coahuila Tamaulipas
Places we could barely sound
Mexican Ferrocarrilles rumbling off our tongues
in an ancient language waiting to be found
Works of art etched in rust
Yellow Rorschach kitten snuggled
into the comfy C of the Chesapeake & Ohio
Caboose grumbling after the rickety stillness
Hardened caliche earth trembling
for the Burlington Northern
Its iron toll ringing
with every spike driven
by the faceless men who faced
the interminable sweat & rust
of a hundred thousand miles
of creosote & cheap labor
lost in the barren southwest Texas dust
to bridge the distances
between shantytowns & cactus
Grandfather Roberto’s ghost wandering the rails
with a tattered bag of ragged tales
I would never come to know
We always found ourselves back
—arriving or departing—
on the other side of los traques
Reverie before reality
Around the turn
the end of the line
______________________________________________________________________
Chihuahua, Coahuila, Tamaulipas—Mexican states
Ferrocarrilles--trains
Los traques—the railroad track
Fernando Esteban Flores is a native son of Tejas, a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin, and has published three books of poetry: Ragged Borders, Red Accordion Blues, & BloodSongs available through Hijo del Sol Publishing, published in multiple journals, reviews, newspapers, and online sites, selected in 2018-19 by the Department of Arts & Culture of the City of San Antonio, with support from Gemini Ink for his poem “Song for America V” (Yo Soy San Antonio) as one of 30 poems/poets to commemorate the City’s Tricentennial anniversary, and serves as poetry editor of the Catch the Next Journal of Pedagogy & Creativity. He is the founder of Voces Cósmicas, a group of emerging and established poets. His latest book is Song for America, published by Gnashing Teeth.
