CENTRALIA
By Ashleigh Tomcics
“Trump likes Nickelback”
- Graffiti highway outside of Centralia, PA
grained radon shifts towards us,
color swirls desolate
and the wind blows deviant wishes
the fissures
live& breathe
under loving coats of chemicals&
foot- fall.i wish I was from here.
i have gold. i think
i can feel the ground- breath rise
&fall but maybe that’s just what I
want,something
to not have lost the fight.
the wind groans in anger.
i am facing inevitability dressed in
rock, twigs grasping
to stay flush with
asphalt and hillside alike,
hills rolling to
Ruin.
when i too am dying, this is
the landscape of my body:
cracked in warmth, sugarcoated
nostalgia, fissures
deep& indistinguishable
from landscape.
entropy smells like the
death of dreams, wafting its way
sprayed down this remembered highway;
i am home.