Atomograd

Atom City, Ukraine

I. Prypiat FunfairThe locked Ferris wheel arcs
against the horizon,a honey fungus¹
flexing² its golden gills.Suspended
from petrified³ cogs,the cars seed
the ash trees belowwith powdered rust⁴.
Beeswax capsulesloft through dead air
like irradiated spores⁵.

II. Worm Wood ForestA plume⁶ of light
leached⁷ sphagnum moss⁸
from the cold bark
of the nuclear forest.The oak groves⁹ steamed;
the black alders¹⁰ flushed ginger¹¹.
Hornbeams grew gigantic,
roots and trunks coiling like double yolks.Each thorny¹² pine, each saxifrage
and small-flowered bitter,
was bulldozed and buried
in a vast fen¹³ grave.The half-life soil
silvered
under its cargo¹⁴
of nettled¹⁵ atoms;
a corncrake quarried¹⁶
the fissured¹⁷ stream
for pike, its beak¹⁸
a carpenter’s rasp.

III. The PierPatched barges²⁰ sluice²¹ sideways
into the phosphorescent river,their bellies²² black bison,
scabbed with radiation.The barge¹⁹ captains evacuated²³
long ago, pressure-dazed, slippingthrough the alienation²⁴ zone
like wild boar. What remains²⁵, now:cucumber shoots drilling
the greenhouse glass, storksnesting in the melted reactor²⁶,
the schoolhouse a wreck²⁷ of scalded textbooks,everywhere the quivering taste
of pins, as if a hedgehog quilled with aluminumhad invaded the dusty samovars
of each sealed concrete tenement²⁸.The barges wait some final passage
like latten ferries embedded²⁹ in the River Styx.