Garnet Poems: An Anthology of Connecticut Poetry Since 1776

The Death of Towns

Gabrielle Calvocoressi (1974– ) The Death of Towns We have been in effect, conducting a vast toxicological experiment, and children are serving as laboratory subjects. —Dr. Philip Landrigan, former special advisor to the Office of Children’s Health Protection of the EPA I remember I thought it was a church. When I was young I thought the factory was a church because it rose from the hills and breathed. But mostly because my father left home, walked through the gates, head bent, and prayed there and was cast out, bleary eyed, huddled and wheezing. And because the waters shone, glistened at night, and the fish we found on the shores of the bell-works were boneless, immaculate. Because it hurt when he came out I thought he was wholly well. Then silence and not a cry so much as the bell grasped mid-swing, an “o” starting as it stops. I was alone and heard him breathing, asked “What” and “How.” And I looked and was afraid. 244 gArnet poems You never saw one alive. They just littered the shore, fist-sized, finless, no real shape. You’d wonder how they lived so long, got so big. Some didn’t have eyes and others wore their organs on the outside, bee-sized heart peeking through and once a tongue like a lick of hair. They were still there after they shut the bell-works down, after the waters started to clear. Because he was boneless, lolling. Because stumps for arms. Because eyeless, empty plane from forehead to perfectly formed nose. Because glistening mouth, mucus, a pane cloaking the “o,” every window I’d ever turned from. Because he was a fish they said I shouldn’t feed him. Should leave him, try again. Sometimes I would take her there and we would lie beside the shore. That first time she bled and cried a bit. I told her about bells, how it took twelve men to lift one. I didn’t say my father saw a man fall into the cast when the bronze was being poured. How his screams came back to him, how you could feel them in the floor. She said, The water shines like bells. They said starving takes time so I shouldn’t stay. But I could hear him everywhere, the wish of his breath, the way it echoed in the bell of him as though he was filled to bursting with horses sighing and chafing against each other. His father looked at him and reared up. And his sweat was like weeping. 245 gABrielle CAlvoCoressi The first time I saw him I thought of my father coming home burned and gasping for breath. How at the end of his life, after the factory closed, he shuddered, troubling the surface, his mouth grasping for any small thing. He’d say, The snow is so red and Who is that screaming? He’d say, Oh God it’s in the water. He’d say, My God we dumped it in the water. Flutter. The flutter of his chest. Breath. Birds perched restless on his gums. The nurses came in. They’d bathe him. It made me want to laugh, their need to keep him clean. As if he could even soil himself. As if there was anything but air inside. Heart. Somewhere a thimble-sized drum. Arms. No arms but reaching. In a dream I named him Hunger. It took awhile to shut it down. First the machines stopped, their heaving slowed to a shy wheeze, then lights turned off, floors swept, the massive bones of bells left naked behind doors and finally the heat receding, lonely caverns cooling one by one until the last man made his way out the door, hand working the back of his neck, back and forth through the night. It takes three days to starve a child, to convince the stubborn drummer it’s time to go home. He struggled. He arched his back as though pulled by a current and would not cool. His tongue licked at the air and he wept though his silence was worse and held us like beasts who are no lighter for having been bled. ...