Scenic Railway, Rockaway Playland, by Ellen Devlin

Listen to the poem here:

July threw a blue-white vapor of heat
between me and a clattering behemoth
on Beach & 98th Street.

Held up by wooden slats, sturdy as cathedral
ribs—Playland, lettered on its curved face like  
a bully’s smile. 

Six tickets handed to a boy holding a rope lifted from a hook. The Atlantic 
exhaled below. 

A bolt slide, a wink, a sun-hot bar pressed 
into my legs, bounce of a lipstick tube
fallen from my pocket.

____________

Ellen Devlin is the author of chapbooks Rita and Heavenly Bodies at the MET. Her recent journal publications include Beyond Words (2023), Muleskinner Journal (2023), Rock Poet Poem (2023), and Westchester Review (2023). She lives in Irvington, New York, with her husband Charles.