Rebecca Lehmann

TRAIN VILLANELLE

You’ve lost a penny, you’ve lost many, you’ve lost your brain.
My son traces a maze with his finger, one
leg kicking under the table to the tempo’s fast train.

Leave my son out of this. Smiling boy who frames
his pictures with stickers, not yours to touch. Be done.
You’ve lost a penny. You’ve lost many. You’ve lost your brain

of course because you’re dead, can’t think, can’t blame
anybody else now. Now, I want you to go,
skeleton legs running like a cartoon train.

Skeleton key in freeze frame dangling from your sprained
neck. No, broken. In the tarot deck you’re upside down,
a lost penny, discarded man with sloshing brains,

your head hinged to ground, one foot flamed
to the side, untied. Delirious spectacle. An eye to thumb
shut. A punch of stars. A halo or arrow, untrained.

I flip you right side up again, spin and spin
you. I’m in control, blow and the boughs
break, like your neck, like a baby, lost, like your brain.
Like your legs twitched a slow tempo, then stopped. Then stop. Then stop this train.

REBECCA LEHMANN is the author of the poetry collections Ringer (Pittsburgh) and Between the Crackups (Salt). Her poetry and nonfiction have appeared in Copper Nickel, The Missouri Review, Ploughshares, and Tin House, and on The Slowdown with Tracy K. Smith. She lives in Indiana, where she is Assistant Professor at Saint Mary's College and the founding editor of the online literary journal Couplet Poetry.