Perky ol’ Thomas winks a bold-faced lie fromhis clacking track, and your heart monitor humsa wry tune no one will admit they’ve already heard.
In regards to the earlier comment about The Little Engine that Could it's the only positive about this poem. The main character is the train that keeps pushing itself up hill. It's clear that she will heal but the world doesn't care about or believe in the steady beat on the heart monitor. But she keeps going anyway.
Elsewhere, 23 seconds rumble again and again throughSharon’s body. Boom, boom, she says to no one.
Sharon joins the growing number of children affected by gun violence.
I was playing with my friend Sharon.I was on the swing
At first read one would assume Sharon is the main character recovering in the hospital. But with these lines it becomes clear that the main character is nameless and survives the shooting with a bullet wound in the shoulder while Sharon is left alone with the ignored victims of gun violence.
Dumbfounded in hospital whites, you are picture-bookitty-bit, floundering in bleach and steel.
While hospitals are known for being stark white children's hospitals are suppose to give off a friendlier vibe to make the kids more comfortable. By the main character being described to be surrounded by hospital whites we can guess she's in a normal hospital since children hospitals are more of an upper class thing. 
A wide-eyed trainengine perfectly smokes, warbles a song about forward.
The lines reminds me of the storybook The Little Engine that Could. By referencing this popular children's book the author is highlight just how small the main character is and her child-like view on the world. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TPUwrURo6M
No need to coo or encircle anything,no call for anyone to pull their official white fingersthrough your raveled hair, no reason to introducethe wild notion of loving you loud and regardless.
I remember reading somewhere that black children see as much gun violence as Iraq vets but because of systematic racism it's swept under the rug. [https://www.blackstarproject.org/index.php/resources/editorials/51-chicago-loses-more-black-kids-than-soldiers-in-iraq-to-gun-violence.html]
And at A. Lincoln Elementary on Washington Street,or Jefferson Elementary on Madison Street, or AdamsElementary just off the Eisenhower Expressway,
One of the main reasons I picked this poem was the rise of gun violence and the lack of care since the Sandy Hook shooting. [https://www.sandyhookpromise.org/get_educated]
And all that was hidden burning on the oil-stained earth
All I thought about was this article when I read this line [https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/08/global-warming-must-not-exceed-15c-warns-landmark-un-report
pounded stumps
Deforestation and mothers being plural to include mother earth.
wooden dollies
I wasn't sure if the author meant wooden dolls or wooden dollies, since they can both be used in the poem. Dollies to help build the theme of industrialization destroying the earth or dolls to show the Innocent lives that are being destroyed.
West Virginia to Kiss My Ass,
When I first read this poem I thought of Take Me Home Country Roads by John Denver with the West Virginia line. I thought these two were possibly song titles.[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vrEljMfXYo]
They didn’t know what else to do except be there to pick him up when he died. They forgot who was dying, who was already dead.
while the author is seeing the death and decay of her family she never mentions how she feels about the situation she avoids using I or me
sword-like mouth, gorged on them, draining color until their eyebrows whitened.
an illusion to humming birds drinking nectar from flowers, he survives by sucking the parents dry