Poems by Daniel Crocker

City of Bones

the worst thing we've ever seen

Robert Bowcock, environmental investigator and colleague of Erin Brockovich

(speaking of Leadwood, Missouri)

I.

The bones broken

bleached cages

just down the street

the new weeds grow

a strange green

The solution to cover lead

with more lead from a town

not much better off than we are

When that didn't work they

sprayed it down with sewage

It's safe, they promised

and the bones grew to dandelions

and we were thankful

to find femurs, ribs bent

to smiles, bits of teeth

tumors spreading into

the marrow of our lives

The shit brought in from the Livestock

Sale Barn, the port-o-potty company

full of hypodermic needles biting

and then

Well, and then there was nothing

not even the sound of our cancers

This is what our fathers died for

we said

Part II

I said

The Company left us

here where the chat dumps loom

like tombstones

Left us like pigs without tits to suck

I said

The Company decided

lead was no longer viable

and left us with it, an illness

I said

and illness

It doesn't really matter anymore

what the men in suits from safer cities

say I said

When they got around to it

they hauled in dirt with less lead

to cover what we already had

and when that didn't work

they covered our town in

shit

literal shit

Months later we were still

picking out bones and teeth

from the dirt

In some yards after the rain

had washed it away

we were left with piles of bones

cattle they said

it's safe and the needles

an unforeseeable side-effect

Our grandfathers won't speak of it

won't utter an ill word toward The Company

that fed them

put shoes on their children

gave them something to do with their

backs and hands

III

What I really mean is this:

the lead runs deep

the dark waters

the tumored fish

the rough hands

run deep

Robbie killed himself

Mike killed himself

Buck killed himself

on and on

It's so simple

our town is small

there's no money

IV

We live in shit

We vote Republican

We pound our Bibles

Eat at McDonald's

drive big trucks

We drink a lot

we fight a lot

we fuck a lot

and pray a lot for salvation

The lady across the street

finally took down her Jesus

is coming soon sign

There's glory in the blood

We were all so busy

waiting on Armageddon

we never noticed

it was already here.

Full Moon

I'm in the dog food aisle

at Wal-Mart when I

am told that my sister

is going to die

I happened to run

into my mother

Well, she said

My sister has

lung cancer

and there's nothing

that can be done about it

She's fine

She's found Jesus

but when it was in

her throat

and they thought

it was gone

after the surgery

they called it a miracle

This will be the

second child my

mother loses

A lot of people

die early here

That night, I smoke a joint

I step out on the back porch

I try to imagine the woods

behind my house as death,

a passage to the other side,

even with a full moon,

it's dark.

Daniel Crocker's latest book is The One Where I Ruin Your Childhood. It's available as a free download from the Sundress Publications website.