There are six figures on the railroad tracks,
three sitting in a modified lotus position on each of the rails.
Because the camera is to the right of the tracks
we see the faces of those on the left more clearly.
These include Ginsberg in austere profile,
Orlovsky, and a young woman in a plaid peasant skirt.
In the perspective of the photograph
the tracks recede from the figures
towards a bend in the rails where the train
carrying fissile waste is stopped.
A man stands at the bend, his features indistinct with distance.
The photo credit is Steve Groer, Rocky Mountain News.
 
 
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Benjamin Goluboff teaches English at Lake Forest College. Aside from a modest list of scholarly publications, he has placed imaginative work — poetry, fiction, and essays — in numerous small-press journals, most recently Chicago Literati, Kentucky Review, and War Literature and the Arts. Some of his work can be read at www.lakeforest.edu/academics/faculty/goluboff/