A Work in Progress: A Poem

By Anna Strad. DO NOT reproduce without permission AND sourcelink!


She stepped out of the streetcar in the foggy early morn,
Dressed to kill or to practice law.
Strand of pearls wrapped round her neck and tied in fashion of a noose,
New York had slain its golden goose.


She had been trapped, like a songbird in a gilded cage,
But the song rang out no more.
She had no outlet for her rage, as a tiger hunting in a meager fall,
Took a train out west to forget it all.


She looked out the car window as midday approached,
'Free at last' she spoke under baited breath.
Thoughts turn'd inward upon the past, eyes turn'd outward, toward the future,
Every new mile a fresh torture.


Her mind reeled, rife with anticipation and regret,
Corset too tight to care to eat.
Thoughts of the game afoot left her weary mind a-churning,
A chess-player, with gears a-turning.


From the station to the hostel in the cool of yestereve,
Victrola and typewriter, her bonds of normalcy.
Her fingers flew over the keys as neighbors complained, Victrola playing on,
Too noisy at midnight to host their salon.


From her fingers poured her pent-up frustration,
As music seeped from the phonograph.
A cacophony arising from the typewriter's keys, punctuated by the bell,
She raptly conducted the key-symphony's spell.


Past witching-hour she work'd, into early shades of dawn,
As ink upon paper, so spilled her thoughts.
Her own ransom note she wrote; her freedom and salvation,
To send news back home of her permanent vacation.


Gone was her old life of decadence and despair,
Sand-blasted away by the wastes of the West.
Her soul had been cleansed by the miles left behind on railroad track,
In the frontier she'd remain, never to look back.


Her spirit had been reborn in the somber desert,
Her sermon the typewriter's proclamation.
And baptized in the Victrola's sweet, crackling victory song,
The end of the world was where she belonged, all along.