NUCLEAR WASTE

by Charles Rammelkamp

Ukraine has initiated a defensive strategy for the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, one of the most radioactive places on Earth, which lies on the shortest path between Russia and Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv. Photo: A Ukrainian border guard on a joint patrol with the Ukrainian police inside the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. —The New York Times, January 22, 2022

“It doesn’t matter if it’s contaminated,

or if nobody lives here,” Yuri declared,

responding to the unspoken skepticism 

in the sheen of the reporter’s dark eyes.

“It’s our territory, our country,

and we have to defend it.”

Shouldering his Kalashnikov, Yuri patrolled 

the snowy fields of the Chernobyl zone;

winter in northern Ukraine.

“I remember reading about the Soviets

parading the children on May Day 

through the swirl of radioactive dust

right after the accident 

to try to make us—and the world—believe 

nothing serious had happened.

Thank goodness I wasn’t alive then.

“Pripyat’s a ghost town now;

used to be the biggest city in the area.

You can still see the old Soviet propaganda –

a sign extolling the virtues of nuclear energy.

‘Let the atom be a worker, not a soldier.’”

Hunching his shoulders, as if to toss away his anger,

shifting the rifle, Yuri went on:

“Now we don’t know 

what will kill us first,

the virus, radiation, or Putin’s bombs.”

 

Charles Rammelkamp is Prose Editor for BrickHouse Books in Baltimore, where he lives with his wife Abby. He contributes a monthly book review to North of Oxford and is a frequent reviewer for The Lake, London Grip, Misfit Magazine, and The Compulsive Reader. A poetry chapbook, Mortal Coil, was published in 2021 by Clare Songbirds Publishing and another, Sparring Partners, by Moonstone Press. A full-length collection, The Field of Happiness, will be published in 2022 by Kelsay Books.

THE COVER UP

by Charles Rammelkamp

After the Tulsa Race Massacre in 1921, whole neighborhoods such as the Greenwood district were destroyed. Photograph: Universal History Archive/Getty Images via The Guardian, May 30, 2021.

“Every year it was one of the most stolen books from the Tulsa library system. Every year I would send them a new box.” —Scott Ellsworth, Death in a Promised Land: The Tulsa Race Riot of 1921

In the late fifties I was teaching history 

at Booker T. Washington High in Tulsa 

when I told my students 

about the massacre in 1921.

“The whites came over the tracks,

machine guns blazing, wiped out Greenwood,

probably more than three hundred dead.”

In fact, I told them, they’d used this building,

Booker T. High, as a hospital for colored folks.

“I don’t believe that!” one of my students shouted,

a pool hustler named Don Ross.

“How come don’t nobody know nothing about it, Mr. Williams?”

But I remember. I was sixteen,

fighting next to my father,

trying to save our building, our business,

Williams Confectionery, down the block

from our other business, Dreamland Theater,

corner of Greenwood and Archer.

The whites finally overwhelmed us.

They marched me down Greenwood,

my arms reaching for empty sky.

I watched a white boy running from our house,

a fur coat belonging to my mother 

clutched to his chest like the pelt

of some animal he’d just killed.

Next day I showed Don Ross the pictures,

charred corpses and burned-out buildings,

took him to meet other survivors.

How come don’t nobody know nothing?

I told Ross: “Because the killers

are still in charge of this town, boy.”

Author's Note: My source for the true story of W.D. Williams is Tim Madigan's "American Terror" in The Smithsonian.

Charles Rammelkamp is Prose Editor for BrickHouse Books in Baltimore. Two full-length collections were published in 2020: Catastroika from Apprentice House and Ugler Lee from Kelsay Books. A poetry chapbook, Mortal Coil, was published earlier this year by Clare Songbirds Publishing.