there is no available canary however the yellowscream of a fox that has splintered its legstrying to outrun its own end may suffice                                  —one could almost believe the old dog simply ambledinto the light of the waxing gibbousthat daybreak would not disclose his shellrigid as glass in the violent dew                                  —forty years my grandpa workedOhio railroads iron tree branchingfrom southern hollers sending coal sapstout as moonshine to sweeten gluttontongues of the near north’s factoriesin his foothill town we can’tdrink water from the tapwithout sickening, we shower quickbefore blighted with inexplicable rashit has been this way so longwe don’t ask questions                                  —daddy just home fromthe industrial glue factory peelsCalvert chemicals off his fingers,clicks his tongue,sighs vinyl chloride?—that’s some toxic shitmama says she’s just glad they’d had usbefore he was ever made to touch it                                  —not a hen in the countywhose eyes would catch the peonysmear of another mountain daybreaka legion of spotted bass belly up in Leslie Run                                  —The fish yesthere was an impact to those. However—                                  —Schrödinger’s cat of my mother’smaybe-cancer. practicallyuntestable, the ovaries that mappedthe half of me, child to uncageat the foot of a floodwall mural proclaimingWelcome to the Atomic Cityfist of this tyrant kingdom: my cityof industry, my city of atom bomb,my city of warheads, of plutonium keptclandestine, of slow killingsaccomplished to more efficientlykill, of truths & metalsforced undergroundI know where the river runs& looking odds in the eye will break me                                  —someone somewhere is always dying& someone somewhere else pays a mortgagewith their finishing breathnow over a state line, now over a border                                  —another business model another cost-cutanother behemoth on a flimsy trackanother layoff another shift another shiftanother layoff another consultantanother cost-cut another hedge fundanother business model another acronymanother euphemism another denialof appropriate protections another cost-cutanother layoff another business model anotheracronym another shift another shareholder another AIwithout oversight another bottom line anothereuphemism another axle bent to breaking another behemothon a flimsy track another accident anotheraccident another accident another accidentanother poison found in the river that raised us                                   — Opened in                    an impoverished regiontrainloads                    uraniumfor bombs                   exposure into the 1990s                    by thenplutonium                   permeatedthe land                    fishing pondscampgrounds                    the communityhas no idea                   “I was toldthis Paducah—                    it doesn’t matter here”                                  —We all know how these stories go.                                  —norfolk southern numbers games:                    one-fifth—of jobs cut in the last                    five—years, the slide to understaffing, precisely scheduled, to reap                    fifty-billion—dollar valuation, for company railroading on a brake system                    one hundred fifty—years old, battling courts against upgrades that could dent                          their                    fifty-billion—valuation, ensuring the environmental disaster of nearly                    fifty—cars derailed or damaged,                    eleven—of which contained highly hazardous substances, prompting the company                          with a                    fifty-billion—valuation to offer as damages to the city                    five—american dollars per chronically endangered inhabitant                                  —[an impact][a conflagration][a migraine][an understanding within our nerves][a weepingin the creeks][a sinking salamander][an evacuation zone][a rigor mortis][a gradual massacre][a dogdead under moonlight][a patientconsequence][consequences][a seepinginto the earth][of us, our animal][bodies, our delicate cells][their chorus,discordant][disquiet in our][queasy guts, our groundwater][if there is nothing][that could harm us][whyare our arms][newly blistered][why][are our throats][too torn][to speak] yes          there was an impactHowever—