by Lin Kaatz Chary
Smoke and blood is the mix of steel.
— Carl Sandburg
Nature
and nature transformed.
Mill lights reflect onto lake, black smoke
of production merged with black clouds
of twilight low on the horizon. The breakwater
a dark arm stretching past the shore, shadows
of slag heaps mound in the weak light.
Hellwalk: flares of fire and gas rolling
across topsides coal dust explosive
as gunpowder novas flash and eat flesh
coal transformed into coke ovens hot
as orange suns in a universe of furnaces
more powerful than night wind sweeps
off water sweeps across battery walkways dark
hawk wingflaps of ice; black ice flesh ice
finger ice freezing third rail dead freezing
pusher machine dead no third rail no coke.
Nature
and nature transformed.
No. 13, high on the horizon – queen
above all others – No. 13, “biggest blast
furnace in the free world”; inside her belly
streams of bright orange percolate molten
through narrow troughs silver sparks and
the smell of sulfur. Helpers, like travelers
from outer space in metallic suits and hoods,
outsized silver hands poke prod pound
jackhammer slams bites, motes of graphite
sparkle through the air stench of rotten
eggs; monoxide hovers omniscient
ghost gauge needles flirt with invisible
danger iron lava gushes in bright tides
hungry mouths of gaping railcars wait
limestone ore and coke remade.
Nature
and nature transformed
Slag pops split the night echo of earthquake
molten steel hitting water can blow
a body back to its original elements: blood
bone bits of matter; pools of leftover
rain glint in quiet shadows unlit corners;
lakes that can break ore freighters
in two hawkwind against waves
hammer against hulls power
cold and raw interlocked shoulder
to shoreline blood to water human
hands and the hot sweat of hard
muscles against tense flesh
the black lake roiling the red
furnaces burning the steel slabs
rolling steam sweat steel
Nature
to nature transformed.
***
Lin Kaatz Chary was a Perry Morgan Fellow in the Creative Writing Program at ODU in Creative Non-Fiction and she also writes poetry. She is the winner of the 2016 ODU College Ruhi Dayanim Poetry Prize. Her work has been published online at Briller Magazine and she writes regularly for the The Body Is Not an Apology. Lin is a non-fiction editor for FourTies Literary Journal.