The city air is cleaner now,
but they hate the smell.
It is hollow like a song
sung without meaning.
Their nostrils
long for the harsher, quilled
haze of industrial fumes
that speak: “the city lives
and has the body odor,
the factory breath to prove it.”
Clean air is sweet,
too sweet, repulsive
to the workers at home,
pretending there is not a problem,
as if the kids haven’t figured it out
on their own.
The streets are empty of purpose,
but filled with stoop smokers,
children long since tired
of their stomping grounds.
Playing is habit,
as is longingly looking
at the sky, suddenly bright
and pumping with color,
animals, clouds
(the non-artificial sort),
and the occasional dusty trail
of a plane that would never dare steer close
to this city of all cities.
They’d cheer for their children’s lungs
if they weren’t so scared
for their bellies,
for the new and far latitude
where the sky still swallows black
while a different set of hands
draws, pours,
feels
the oil and works the curves
of the machines
the city weeps for.
Image and text by Timothy Tarkelly
Timothy Tarkelly has an MA in Theatre (Drama Therapy) from Kansas State University. His poems have been featured by Lycan Valley Press, Fourth & Sycamore, Poets & War, and Aphelion. He is a member of the National Writers Union (UAW local 1981) and is on the National Committee of the Social Democrats, USA. When he is not writing, he works for a non-profit that serves survivors of domestic and sexual violence.
