PUBLISHED IN HYPHEN LITERARY & ARTS MAGAZINE

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​The aluminum complex has closed.

The blue-collared men shouted as they were             buried in the snow, the harsh Minnesotan winter                        not one for taking refugees.
Black-suited bandits & slippery-eyed thieves
criss-crossing the once snow-trodden streets of Ravenswood,
'The town with the aluminum factory.'
before the crash of '07, and even before that,
             when your dad got benefits and
healthcare and a 401K plan for
being rippled aluminum, He,
A part of the Industrialized American Machine,
men's muscles churning and aching and toiling and breaking but it was a Golden age, of sorts, the children played in the road and your wife did the dishes and didn't worry about kidnappers.
The thing was, we made aluminum, and metal gets so
cold in the winter.
The lock of the plant gate is shut,
                                                first thing you see driving in, is the FACTORY CLOSED sign
swinging
& clanging
against its chains in the wind,
like some old church bell tolling in a             lost             medieval            town             in Italy.

Sometimes, I find myself wandering back
                                    to where I used to work, to where my father & my grandfather worked             (son's gone selling insurance in the city)
Watching my steps lead me
back there, hearing the metal
Calling my name with the
guise of a woman's smile             and a faded check.

The large, iron columns blending into the gray sheet of sky,
my own beard, white as the snow,
arthritic knobs for knuckles,
                                                There's not much work left in this old body of a town, yet,
I hear the buried blue-collared             men             pounding the earth beneath me
hands curled into fists, arms outstretched, pushing, pushing up
against the weight of the snow,                         surface cracking.