Company Town ( a poem I wrote after touring Hanford Nuclear Reservation)

[Generic Other]

Company Town

Along this stretch of river,
silence never lifts.
Boarded up houses with “for sale” signs
line the edge of town,
out past the Atomic Autowrecker’s
tangle of rusted chrome, windshields,
and blackberry vines.

Downwind, nothing moves.
Not many secrets remain buried either;
the rotten past bubbles up
through floorboards,
sloughs off walls,
grimly oozes into the river.

Where scientists once spun starglass,
nothing left now but ticking death
the rattle of geiger counters and security badges.

Seems everyone in town knows
someone who worked at the plant forty
years, never had an accident,
smoked five packs of marlboros
every day, ate lard on toast, pissed
out gutloads of beer,
drove ten miles in his pickup to the plant
along this road every damned day,
window rolled down, dust blowing
in off the arid reach.
He was the oldest man in town
when he died. Outlived a whole lot of people.

Even outlived his kid. Some problem with the
thyroid. No one knew what.
A long time ago before they had names
for that kind of stuff. Could
have been Strontium 90 in the milk, they said.

His wife got tired easy,
worn out long before, no doubt;
she caught a bus heading west. Never came back.
His neighbor left too.

That’s when the first ones on the fuel reactor crew
went on medical disability. One of the plant managers
blamed carelessness. Company doctor wouldn’t
say, but everyone else knew it was cancer.
They died in pieces, one inch at a time, in those days.

No one dares keep score in a company town
where the high school jocks wear
atomic mushroom clouds emblazoned on
their letterman’s jackets, and everyone
knows someone they like who works over there.

the women work elsewhere if they are
still young enough to want more babies.

In a place like this, everyone
is strictly non-essential personnel,
sniffed and x-rayed everyday before
they get off work. With blank expressions,
all carry the weight of spent fuel rods
like enormous suppositories. Their footsteps
echo as they pass through scanners and,
machine gun stiff security, with shoes that click
against cement as they punch a timeclock
ticking to meltdown.

[ensho]

1. thank you truth teller

nt

[Generic Other]

2. Thanks Ensho

I am not ashamed to say I am 100% anti-nuke.