In emptied Picher, house shells huddle together
to discuss their hollow fate.

A Quapaw Nation truck sits in the lot out front
of the old school – fifteen years closed,

as a hacking Ozark wind shakes the powdery chat
from the piles towering over town,

byproducts of the mines that fed two world wars'
ammunition. All of them shut down.

Contaminated, reports read. Cursed in Superfund.
Toxic town, papers read. Blighted.

Imagine your hometown as a corpse: murals, water tower,
all faded carrion in the anxious sun.

At the slithering edge, mine leaks rust Tar Creek’s
rough lips, a hot whiskered kiss

full of yellow scum, of manganese and lead, zinc,
cadmium, dolomite, and limestone.

Something like a dying bird sings in the houses –
EPA minor key sightreading –

while another gust tints the sky in a dust tone,
smoke-pale and ghost-thick.