the railway, 1873

by Sara Potocsny

The color is a modern blue. The sea in 2024 alone. 

A cosmopolitan blue but chillier, which happens 

when the sea warms. Things do blue when they die, 

you know. What’s hard about ekphrasis is that 

what is there is obvious, but to describe only 

what the players in a piece of art endure is to 

color a decent memory with only my pink feelings. 

But the train is so mighty. The day is so small 

compared to its rue and its might. I wonder where 

it might go. To the top of a hill! There, it will stop.

The engine will run cold. The conductor will take 

a long drag of his pipe, and, looking out over the fields 

of corn and grass think, “I wonder where it will go. 

I wonder where all of it will go.”

Sara Potocsny is a writer in Brooklyn, NY. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from Syracuse University. She is the author of Dozer from Bull City Press! She has work in or forthcoming in the Los Angeles Review, Maudlin House, The Offing, Juked, Hobart, Radar, HAD, The Racket, Rejection Letters, and others. You can find her on twitter at @sarapotocsny and IG at @spotocsny.