Grand Central, Track 23

By Elizabeth Skurnick Elizabeth Skurnick

I forgot to tell you it's almost time to go.

The sun has distilled its particular worn essence

And the glittering trout is flipped on the bow.

A man asks me what time it is. I don't know.

I have emptied my purse and wept in the presence

Of onlookers. I forgot to remember to go

Before eleven, when the steely arrow

Shot swimming to its underneath, tense

As a stream of salmon in reverse below

The laureled, relentless clocks. The sceptered row

Of columns dreams one o'clock, immense,

Inviolate. What time is it? I don't know.

This story concerns the night I tried to go—

Though many times I flopped into the silence

Of orange plastic seating like onto the bow

Of a lonely ship, and felt my breathing slow.

The frail, retreating stand of columns prevents

The clocks from telling me time and time again to go.

At my feet, a glittering trout swims past the bow.

"Grand Central, Track 23" by Elizabeth Skurnick from Check In, published by Caketrain Press. Copyright 2005 by Elizabeth Skurnick. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Source: Check In (Caketrain Press, 2005)

Biography

Elizabeth Skurnick was born in the Bronx in 1973 and grew up in Englewood, New Jersey. Her first collection, the Pushcart Prize–nominated chapbook Check-In (Caketrain Books, 2005), was recently reissued. Skurnick, who “rhymes, mostly,” as she herself puts it, combines traditional formal structures with contemporary and original subject matter, as her villanelle, “Grand Central, Track 23,” elegantly demonstrates. Eliza . . .

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