Free Entry 3, Week 2

This poem actually came from our class exercise on writing as an observer on a train. I wanted to type up and work with some of the language from that exercise!

The leathery woman's baggy jade baubles
swing violently with every braking shove,
knowing they went out of style sixty years ago.
A man, his skin too taut over his jagged face,
stares at his own eyes, not noticing the chain gang
of gothic heroes and mad men thumping
restlessly through the gray grass fields
overgrown with browning dandelions.
The overseer never moves his dark sunglasses
but to give his speckled mutt water
from the tin cantina.
The little boy across the aisle teases
his too-light eyes through his still-lighter
eyelashes to look at the prisoners
between pages in his Mickey Mouse coloring book.
He scribbles curls outside the lines,
giving Mickey a purple afro.