Home, To Picher, Oklahoma

Home,

to Picher, Oklahoma

Grandma Connell, whose tears

soaked a new beret at Fort Benning,

lived at Central and Cherokee with four cats

in a pistachio-painted A-frame house.

He saw her yesterday at a nursing home in Tulsa,

but the house and the cats, and Grandpa’s

hand-carved cherry table where Tollie

taught him chess and bridge while

three older brothers toiled in the lead mine

that sentenced this town to death, long

before the tornado carried out the execution--

they’re all gone.

The prairie wind scrubs at the ruins

with metallic dust

’til the air looks and smells like Fallujah

right before the Marines went in.

His unit followed them, patrolling day

after day on a street like this, but there

sweat was poured into renewal.

In Picher, even cleaning up is futile.