cranberry glade
in the wet, sphagnum moss expanded to hold
20 times its dry mass. soil scientists, reading peat
for changes in atmospheric nitrates, uncovered
a can of pepsi preserved for half a century under the bog.
down the ridge, men stocked a lake with trout,
bred in concrete vats, funneled into tanker trucks,
stamped out into the sudden being of the river’s
headwaters as if they were fenders in an assembly line
of ford plymouths in a poem i'd read, in the admissions
office of a rehab facility, a decade earlier.
on the forest service road, snow, the most readily
available metaphor for the airborne debris
that follows a nuclear exchange, fell such
that the boughs of red spruce seemed to draw themselves
back into the earth, the valley before us dusted white
as a cross mounted above a gravel quarry.
we spent the rest of the trip touring the bunker
hidden under a resort for wealthy virginians;
its dormitories, 80 feet below hardened siltstone,
full of artificial shrubbery and photographs of national
monuments, a recording of running water playing
on loop in its tile-lined decontamination chambers.
after the advent of ICBMs, the guide told us,
the congressional fallout shelter became
impractical due to the logistics of evacuation.
along the road, sun burned off the fog.
upon admission, the rehab’s behavioral tech
confiscated all my books. the mounted television
played a news report about drone strikes in libya.
someone handed me a paper cup full of tranquilizers.
on the wall, the line of the ocean in a reproduction
of a painting of cape cod frothed and rose.
as i unbuttoned your blouse with my teeth,
the knob of your sternum left a dark cloud in my vision.
spring's sudden heat leached tobacco smoke
back out of the walls. the streetlight, sliced by
venetian blinds, cast your room in uranium yellow.
our phones erupted, simultaneously, with emergency alerts.
in the photo from the scenic overlook, you squinted
against the sun's greying light, the valley’s grand gesture
of erosional forces already ravaged by our line of sight.
behind us, radio towers blinked red in unison.
algae, hardened into rock, leached carbonate minerals
into the bog, its soil acidic enough to keep it boreal
as the world around it warmed, as droves of elk herded north
into tundra receding into fields full of broomsedge
and piled hubcaps; the bog's novelty its very capacity
to survive us. aside the boardwalk, pitcher plants
cocked like ears that traced our footfall.
in rehab, we'd chain smoke camels
and talk about how good it felt to sit back
and wait for our lives to end. it took a week
to stop my hands’ ceaseless trembling.
i kept the chip under my pillow like it'd get replaced
by a tooth for each night i'd stayed clean.
every morning, we watched skeins of deer,
wary-eyed as cattle on a truck bed, dart
across the highway and slip into hollers
quiet as an overdose. on the chapel door,
a cross hung without a body.
ethan s. evans is a writer and photographer; their work has appeared or is forthcoming in venues like The Kenyon Review, ONLY POEMS, Zyzzyva, and terrain.org. Read more.