Thresholds and Other Poems. Matt Hohner
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in the trackside weeds. A three-legged mongrel tightens
at the end of its chain in a dirt yard, barks all night
at trains rumbling slowly east past tenements and tents,
pounding through the neighbors’ alcohol sleep.
A wet easterly breath off the water, carrying the sewage
stench of the treatment plant, mudflats of dumped tires
at low tide, the dry hack of toxic dust over Bear Creek
from the tailings of Sparrows Point’s last convulsive blasts
of furnace and steel, over mercury sludge hiding enough crabs
for someone to pull out on chicken necks, steam for dinner,
ignore the metallic taste, swig it down with beer.
The children raise themselves in anger and show up
for school doped on mom’s pills, unshowered and late,
cussing like absentee longshoremen fathers they never met,
hope flickering there behind dark inlets of eyes seeking love,
heartbeats begging routine, arms flailing for a hug
and punching at walls they cannot see. Tough.
Scratch it. Underneath the skin, Job’s blood courses
through lava veins where it is still warm, the soul breathing,
singing in joy at dawn for the promise of another day,
clamoring through all the damage to a heart still beating
to the rhythm of lunar ebbs, shift whistles, stirring to the sound
of acrid cloudsmoke scraping across an impossible sky.
The Maximum Effective Range
for the victims at Virginia Tech, April 16, 2007
The diameter of the bullet is .22 inches
and the distance of its maximum effective range
is thirty yards, but further when fired by anger
fueled with paranoia, curving with the earth,
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