Ed Ochester Presents a Poem by Jan Beatty

“Nobody has a better sense of the colloquial American idiom. Nobody among her contemporaries writes better poems about urban working-class life. And she can surprise you, too, as in the following poem.”

—Ed Ochester





after sex on a train

canadian rockies fill
my window I am naked
eating blueberry muffins
sipping coke and smelling sperm
lakes and pines no birds fly past
I think of wild blueberries
bleeding juice through pale yellow
the yellow that’s almost white
my calves bruised from holding on
rivers moving swollen white
rail ties lie in piles and I
sniff the musk that we all want
telephone poles bending toward
water the white birch the pines

-- Jan Beatty

“after sex on a train” from Mad River
$14.00 • 64 pp. © 1996 University of Pittsburgh Press

Also by Jan Beatty from the Pitt Poetry Series:
Boneshaker          $12.95
Red Sugar             $14.00

American Poetry Now, ed. Ed Ochester, features poems by Jan Beatty and many others from the Pitt Poetry Series.