The green snaps—white teeth break the life
Of Pittsburgh’s pickle—covered, sweet, in chocolate.
The sour fills my mouth--the chocolate
not sweet enough to cover what makes my face pinch.
Field below, green where children play soccer
Fertile with radiation like The Swampy Place of my childhood
That we discovered, escaped to—to eat sweet
Meals in light as green as Spring’s buds.
Three native children—two explaining, passing on
What no one wants to know, the other waiting for a bus
Scratch-off ticket on his knee, hood up, waiting
To leave Turtle Creek, Pennsylvania.
We bond over fathers’ work—Mine welded casings
For nuclear waste—My brother may know him.
How many generations have I been a daughter
of people sick with the work of a nation?
My inheritance, like theirs—
Is the green we allow in our lives
Swamps fertile with shit, fields green with nuclear waste
Pickles covered in chocolate.
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