Shriram Sivaramakrishnan
9 to 5
sometimes a bird clamps on a train track
for its early morning song --
an inverted question mark with a dot
for the world
the first hint
of a train
tickles the bird’s claw
like a Richter scribble
long before the train trundles in
before the screech of its wheels
cracks the dawn
and the tracks trivialize the song
Shriram Sivaramakrishnan is a proud alumnus of Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry. His poems have recently appeared in Allegro, Coast to Coast to Coast, Bird's Thumb, Pidgeonholes, among others. His debut pamphlet, Let the Light In, was published by Ghost City Press in June 2018. He tweets at @shriiram.