August 2018
NOTE: As a child I often visited my coal mining relatives in the Appalachian Mountains of Pennsylvania. Since then, I have been struck by the relationship between industrial food, industry, and the workers who struggle to make a living. Even food of questionable nutritional value can be offered with pride to a loved one or neighbor.
When the coal mining companies in Pennsylvania began stripping away the mountainside just feet away from my relative's property, we all gawked at the unnaturally blue and green ponds left behind. We lived with chemicals in the refrigerator and chemicals in the water around us.
When the coal mining companies in Pennsylvania began stripping away the mountainside just feet away from my relative's property, we all gawked at the unnaturally blue and green ponds left behind. We lived with chemicals in the refrigerator and chemicals in the water around us.
Chili Burger
Full metal throat
of tin can chili
Sunday evening surprise visit
my new neighbor
this food stuff of industry
of industrial decline
clanged against my fillings
his mother’s own recipe
one can with meat
one can without
on a toasted bun
topped with American melted
his unfocussed eyes
offered this chili burger
as a gift
or repayment
for the use of my can opener
he opened an age-old pride
his mother’s overburden craft
he opened an 8-track cassette tape
opened a Mountain Dew
shelved in the yellowed Frigidaire
my spinster aunt
kept on hand
she loved the name Mountain Dew
spoken in the tongue
of her own Blue Ridge poetry
She cooked on a coal stove
one temperature
seasoned our food with sulfur fume
the way we went skinny dipping
in the skree-lined alkaline pool
when the strip mine was done
Published in Gyroscope Review
© 2018 Sylvia Cavanaugh
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