Iron Works, Coal Dock, Pine Ave.
 
You can't help but listen as it comes as it travels up a street
named for what is gone what you can't imagine was ever
there but rolls on in deepest fog and Midwest midnight where
there should be no sound, not even the wind or shush of wheels. Small
shoes pound and clack with flecks of metal in their soles over
the scrap heaps and slag piles of Padnos Iron Works and on into coal
dock where you wait and they come climbing, scrabbling up stone
 
piles all around and sliding down again, familiar as your need
to forget what you are, what you were, your body then
and now--the layers of fat that wrap and smother some lean,
quick, kicking thing, distant and nearing as another country
as echoing sourceless laughter: mierda,vamanos, so they hear you
too, you're own taut breath, creak of wires in the chest--the tightening
 
every old nightwatchman feels, stopping gasping, shouting hey kid,
kid, get out of there. Over here.  Almost. Too slow fat man
Over here--Dont have a heart attack--Frightened for yourself
for those with no heart in it and the half-remembered way
it felt to slide down a great heap of stone, to cover yourself
in dust and swear at anyone who tried to stop it. Shit,
damn-it, hey kid, kid, fuck, get out, trying
 
trying to breathe, coal dust, water, ghosts, and iron, bitter,
hard in your throat.