Issue 44.1 Summer/Fall 2023

A Winter Sacrifice

lake ice

I tiptoe down this length of America,

a small pier, rusted dagger into the stagnant water.

Lake Michigan breathes beneath me

and the ice wheezes and cracks,

 

like slabs of drowning lung,

like my father in the mill,

like my father late at night.

Chicago crawls across the gray horizon,

 

and through the ice, I hear Michigan

gasp at this untended altar

to Industry, deity of old steel and death.

Through the ice, I see my father, no

 

I see an asbestos suit, steelworker’s hood

and obsidian face shield, the unfired kiln

that ate men and car skeletons, empty

maw of Industry’s hunger, but I know my father’s face

 

when I see it. After a lifetime of worship, he is sacrificed

to the rusted god, rail-tied wrists bound to the pier, beneath

the huffing ice. The lake heaves upwards again,

my father’s head cranes to me and I know

 

he sees me peering down at him.

He is still, almost dead, willing, a live

thing that melted dead things to make dead things,

given up now to the Once Almighty.

 

Exhale. He looks down. Inhale.

He looks up. Exhale. I leave

on the next breath, the dead father

coughs a hymn to its dead god.

 

 

Photo by https://unsplash.com/@hans_isaacson?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=refe…