Don't Leave Hungry: Fifty Years of Southern Poetry Review

Richland Dock, 1956

K AT H L E E N F L E N N I K E N Richland Dock, 1956 Someone launched a boat into the current, caught and delivered fish to the lab and someone tested for beta and P-32. Someone with flasks and test tubes tested and re-tested to double check the rising values. And someone drove to the public dock with a clipboard and tallied species and weight. Chatting with his neighbors, Which fish are you keeping? How many do you eat? And someone with a slide rule in a pool of light figured and refigured the radionuclide dose. Too high. Experimented frying up hot whitefish. No. No. Then someone decided all the numbers were wrong. Someone from our town. Is that why we were never told? While someone fishing— that little boy; the teacher on Cedar Street— caught his limit and never knew. The 2000s ❚ 285 ...