Rust Belt Headline

The places their trains derail, the wrenching of tracks now perpendicular and shrieking of iron torn asunder, make Main Street a ghost town, make our living rooms stink of burning plastic, make our noses bleed every time the wind changes direction. Our porch swings unusable, our backyard gardens pure poison, our families halve from carcinogen-laced air.

The places their factories close, whirring conveyor belts forever silenced and the midnight shuttering of doors and tossing away of keys and dumping of waste in our rivers and signing of contracts with fancy city lawyers, make our bellies swell with hunger, make our lungs choke with lumps, make our tree-lined roads empty of visitors. Do you remember when Pat’s Diner offered the lunch buffet for five dollars? Or when Dr. Forrester’s practice up the hill “lost” the bills for our uninsured neighbors, but now no one in town’s got company coverage, he sends the bills by First-Class Mail, so we let our coughs rasp a little longer and our fevers breed dreams dark and dangerous?

The places their drills burrow deep, the quaking land they buy up from dying aunts and uncles and the hiss of chemicals they inject into our manure-rich soil, make our hearts stutter and stop, make our vision flicker and blur. When we save up enough money, maybe we’ll get a little camper RV, migrate to a different zip code when our teeth begin to wiggle and our armpit lymph nodes cramp and swell. We can’t leave just yet, but if we close our eyes and plug our ears against the earth’s cry, weeping as a murder victim beneath our feet, we might imagine mountain air crisp and clear and burbling cricks without a hint of rusty run-off. 

The places their journalists visit, the scorch-marked golden corn fields and our foundations collapsing into the valley and Pat’s Diner now only open for breakfast with eggs tasting less eggy and more coppery since the last explosion, make our welcome signs into taglines, make our mayor into a talking head on page one’s smeared colors. Those reporters text their wives, “how could this be allowed to happen,” or FaceTime their husbands, “get me out of this ass-end of nowhere,” or email, “stay safe, my dear one” to their adult children. Because this is our home. We spread our arms wide for the cameras, in welcome, in resignation, in wanting for more, for better, in this land that we love, and maybe, just maybe, someone with purse strings, someone in office, someone beyond our neck of the woods, will listen.  

Lauren Kardos (she/her) writes from Washington, DC, but she’s still breaking up with her hometown in Western Pennsylvania. The Molotov Cocktail, Spry Literary Journal, hex, Bending Genres, Best Microfiction 2022, and The Lumiere Review are just a few of the fine publications that feature her stories and poems. You can find more of her work at www.laurenkardos.co.

Published October 15 2024