Stephen Bluestone

THE TROLLEY

It was stuck and what with rationing and brownouts
and the men away and Dave off to artillery at Fort Bragg
there were problems and even Ruth worked and I
don’t recall that she ever worked again and then all of a sudden
someone leaped on the trolley and opened a box
or a circuit board and fiddled around and quickly fixed it
and it started up and who it was we never knew
but the car got moving and everyone clapped in that
shining world where heroes always crushed the other side
and you cheered at cities bombed and burning twice a week
in newsreels at the show and everyone prayed for losses
greater than our own but yesterday a shooting down the street
and someone called who hadn’t called in twenty years
a friend you’d lost forever said another shooter at a school.

Author: Stephen Bluestone

Stephen Bluestone has won The Thomas Merton Prize and The Greensboro Review Prize and published three volumes of poetry. He has co-edited and co-translated a bilingual anthology of the poetry of Mexico City and New York City (From Neza York to New York). His work has appeared in “Poetry,” “The Sewanee Review,” “Boston Review,” “The Hudson Review,” and other journals.

Plume: