"Kim Jon Ung's Train to China" and “Four Mile Run Drive, October"

by Nina Murray

from the collection Minor Heresies

Kim Jon Un’s train to China

a conspiracy of course:
they want him to see the beet fields
and the nickel mines they say
an ancient grove of plum trees in bloom
that had driven mad a famous poet
and is not far from the wharfs
where they've laid the keel of the first nuclear-powered
icebreaker
the train doesn't feel like it's taken a turn
the track unspooling serenely ahead
leading on in perfect conviction
a ninth-grader math wiz from inner mongolia
entertaining herself at the airport
while she waits to board her plane to canada
calculates there's enough track
to keep the train running for decades without
repeating the view
the national science council that gave her
the scholarship takes note of this finding

someone gets an award
for having had the foresight not to mothball
a party-run printshop that can now churn out
fake versions of national papers with the front pages to meet
the tactical want
they deliver daily the visit in the national limelight
the scrapbook grows

at a brief stop one of the conductor girls
is caught in a local guard's selfie—
unforeseen, masses fall in love with her
her face
the dream of never stopping
surveillance teams respond to the surge of chatter
recommend halting the train
with a prettier backdrop next time
the girl is sighted
people guess at her name
she cannot say
she is now an excellent asset

one night she'll defect
lured not by the promise
of a new name
and face
but the pure thrill
of an arching
linear narrative

Four Mile Run Drive, October

I

this is the one with whom I feel most kinship:
perched atop the lamp post by the trail
discreet in his (her? I cannot gender crows)
stillness under the slowly turning gyre—the loose-winged murder
a speckling on the perfect October sky the color you'd name
frosted pumpkin spice if it were lip-gloss
observant
reassuring with his well-timed caws
and quizzical, I feel, as much about me
as I am of this ritual wherein
the crows, a handful at a time,
descend onto the pebbles of the creek
and bathe
as dignified and
mannerly as Romans

II

the outside margin of nostalgia
is the last page in a used-up passport
full of exit stamps commingling their inks
a mongrel pedigree
my ghosts reduced to spectral marmosets
winged on my shoulders
I can feel them part the hair at my nape
touch my scalp with their infant-sized
icy fingers
poetry is what I would think if I wore the skin

of this sentinel crow
who both knows the instincts that bring
the murder to this particular park
and allows for fissures
mutations
sudden enlightenments and risks
the one poised to witness whatever comes next