By Sakena Jwan Washington
inspired by “Man on Tracks,” a photograph by Huck Beard
Darkness falls
With the shake and shiver of the frame
These muted shadow tones
Take me back in time
So many ghosts come to mind:
Black men on chain gangs
Earl Little laid beneath a streetcar
Families huddled on a one-way trip to Auschwitz
Ragged run-a-ways seeking refuge
Are these the morbid thoughts you ponder?
Paralyzed by your own passivity
Frozen while the world around you rumbles and jolts
Then slides and short circuits with steady sparks
Train tracks, a lonely landscape
No good can come from slipping into solitude
You’re flirting with death at dusk
Playing chicken just to feel something beyond rage
But which way will you run
when the whistle blows?
Will the sound of your own panting revive your purpose?
Will the sound of the brakes stir your spirit?
Look, I don’t know when the sun will rise
But there’s still time to wake from this nightmare
And shift to a dreamy sequence
Where pastoral scenes appear through picture windows
and cityscapes signal some kind of hope
Sakena Jwan Washington (she/her) is a Pittsburgh boomeranger and creative nonfiction writer. She’s the 2024-25 Emerging Black Writer-in-Residence at Chatham University where she is teaching MFA in Creative Writing students and developing a limited-edition chapbook as part of the Boosie Bolden Chapbook Series published by The Fourth River. Her work has appeared in Bellevue Literary Review, Torch Literary Magazine, Huffington Post,and others. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University, Los Angeles. More of her work can be found at sakenajwan.com.
