The orientation video begins with fire
and hurricane—familiar, comfortable disaster.
Then, with a queer segue, the AWOOGA
AWOOGA of commencing reactor meltdown.

I sit in my summer suit from Nordstrom,
the only new hire today, not dressed
for fear in the shape of a mushroom cloud
or the end of the human race.

The clerk sorts through papers as though
this is any work day. I believe in her
eye shadow, the orange on her desk,
but the siren sounds deep in my lizard brain,

in my involuntary heart which has
stopped and locked—the way security
(explains a calm voice in the video)
will lock down the gates and my chicken body

run in circles as my severed future fries.
Hear the siren once and it will change
your life. That night I’ll wake transformed
into a cockroach, scaling the inside

of a reactor dome.

-- Kathleen Flenniken
This poem is included in the collection, Plume,
(University of Washington Press, 2012.)