- X-Ray Film, 2009
Near where lattice-stemmed mushrooms bloomx-ray film was buried in a baseball diamond,
sunk in haste when the film factory closedand the company baseball teams folded.
Men played for relief from the stress of chemistry,cellulose triacetate in their nostrils, and forklifts,
until the fear of job loss became a malignancyunder a thousand ribcages and spines.
The film has bubbled up to the surfacebecause Earth spits back what tries to poison it.
And the film is exposed now in the forest light,lying in pieces, small and large rectangles,
blue, gray, opaque, some transparent,spreading out over first base and left field,
vestiges of shadow, of sickness in the human gut,insight into the workings of a thing gone wrong. [End Page 97]
Anne Harding Woodworth is the author of four books of poetry and two chapbooks. She divides her time between a home south of Brevard, North Carolina, and a home in Washington, D.C., where she is a member of the Poetry Board at the Folger Shakespeare Library.