T. Mike Gardiner. Yellowcake. 2009

Photo By Richard Nicol

North Richland Childhood

We came from Oklahoma, momma,
daddy and me, after the war, dirt poor,
to live in a twenty by eight foot trailer,
on a thirty by thirty foot lot, with other

electricians, pipe fitters, teamsters, janitors,

proud to be part of this “atomic business”

living in the Largest Trailer Court in the World,

big enough to have our own ghetto, two blocks

of dark, delicious smells – frying fish, boiled

greens, hot cornbread.

Once a month from the top of tall poles,

warning sirens wailed, the children, black
and white, raced past swings, monkey bars,

the tetherball ring, to the sandy ditch behind

John Ball School, strung ourselves face down

like paper dolls, clenching our fear behind closed

eyes. A useless defense against nuclear attack,

but we would have been easy to bury there.

-- Jane Roop

This poem was published in Soundings Review

BEDROOM COMMUNITY

We were all bedded down
in our nightcaps, curtains drawn

as swamp coolers and sprinklers
hissed every brown summer hour, or in winter

sagebrush hardened in the cold. It was still dark

as our fathers rose, dressed, and boarded

blue buses that pulled away, and men
in milk trucks came collecting bottled urine

from our doorsteps. Beyond the shelter belt
of Russian olive trees, cargo trains shuffled past

at 8:00 and 8:00, and the wide

Columbia rolled by, silent with walleye

and steelhead. We pulled up our covers

while our overburdened fathers

dragged home to fix a drink,

and some of them grew sick—

Carolyn, your father’s marrow

testified. Whistles from the train,

the buses came, our fathers left.
Oh Carolyn—while the rest of us slept.

-- Kathleen Flenniken

This poem is included in the collection, Plume,

(University of Washington Press, 2012.)

Gail Grinnell. Chalice. 1993

Photo By Richard Nico