Note: In 1986, Chernobyl's Reactor 4 was destroyed during a test that went horribly wrong. The surrounding area was evacuated and much of the forest around the nuclear reactor site was cleared away. To contain the radioactive materials leaking from the site, a metal "sarcophagus" was built over the reactor, though some material escaped containment. Later, the New Safe Confinement building sealed the reactor and sarcophagus more completely. There is some speculation that the Soviet Union built Chernobyl to power Duga, a massive over-the-horizon military radar system, near Chernobyl. This poem, written in late 2021 except for the Coda, takes that idea as its starting point.

I. Witness: Or, Duga Recounts the Meltdown of Chernobyl's Tower Four

1.

You expect me to give you history: mothers
returning to land once deemed too radio-
active, tongues of Geiger counters
clicking away as I once did. Launch echoes,

missiles I'd been trained on. I'd heard
shuttles instead, astronauts. Spark-winged
birds I'd been nicknamed for. Swerved
flights leaving Earth, braced for their returning--

You expected me to give you history, your mother
born the same year as the Voyagers
crowned their way toward interstellar space,

born the same year as the first Chernobyl
reactor began tearing apart worlds:
broken-cored, hard-skulled as a shelled virus--

2.

Broken cord: hard-skulled as I was,
pecking echoes from dead-branched
diplomacy, how could I hear her voice,
suddenly cut? The sand-drenched

attempts at controlling her came later.
Witness, memory: havoc releasing neutrons,
nuclear forces breaking my connection to her.
I remember her feeding me, then we were broken--

Broken chord, unskilled as I was,
teaching you meant remembering music
I'd abandoned with my body years ago.

You expected me to give you letters,
numbers, a sense of freedom from crisis:
Listen, I taught you which fears to follow--

3.

Listen: she taught me which fears to follow.
When they test you, they test connection.
Chasing the arc of Space Shuttles. Echo
movement of my radar, seeking locations

upward, forward, of what might have met us.
She taught me when we were together
repetition gives us freedom. Silence
again and again meeting my receiver--

Listen, I taught you which fears to follow
your questions with. What work to show
signaling what you understood of addition,

addition's opposite. What did I teach you?
You waved your small hands in our picture window
while I pulled toward the moment of vaccination--

4.

While I pulsed toward the moment of reaction
separating us, what signals did I lose?
A deer paused, perhaps. A fairy-tale maiden
touched her neck. Did she hear a bird's voice

warning her of the specifics of desire? I envied
patience with which she waited for the birds'
movement against the trees, as if some envoi
escaped their wings. Then, I felt the surge--

While I pulled toward the moment of vaccination,
(Fair Park, gates echoing the Ferris wheel within--
we all want to be held and moved), signs

instructed us to listen to a low-powered FM
station. How we were promised one thing and given
another shot. How shielded and vulnerable in these lines--

5.

Another shock: how shielded and vulnerable in these lines,
connection between us, or so I thought. Had I seen her,
solid against the forest around us? I'd seen her sacrifice,
containment of what could kill us all. One doll inside another:

concrete, zirconium, uranium, electron shells, then at the nucleus,
particles clinging together like frightened children. Scattered,
children become an army. I'd seen her sacrifice. A village
built for her, children fissile in the trees, for her, reactor--

Another shock: how "shielded" and "invulnerable" in these lines
we were given after, how we were meant to return to lives
we'd led before as if you, too, had been given a chance at safety.

Schools opened, parks, playgrounds. The State Fair
beckoned families. Our masks marked us cowards.
If only you were still contained within my body, my immunity--

6.

If only I were still contained within her: power
tested, taken from her. Do I still see the moment
fire and stone overtake the night sky? Her tower
blown, do I still see smoke against firmament?

And still, her other reactors kept us screaming
pulses into the darkness. You tell me this was only one
tower she'd lost, one of four. Still producing
heat, the promise of heat into the April dawn--

If only you were still contained within my body, my immunity
towering against the unmasked, the denial of what keeps rising--
smoke billows up as quickly as numbers, mutations.

Instead, I take you inside my work. They deny
rising numbers, mutations, the uncontrolled virus;
how can I deny you the shelter of my remaking--

II. Sarcophagus: Or, Duga Considers the Concrete Shelter over Chernobyl's Reactor 4

1.

You expect shelter, when you're a child
disconnected from the shelter you'd known:
Look, they poured sand over her, melted
uranium, what they used to control

reactions in uranium together into a lava. Did they
consider what it is to be volcanic? Let's be precise
here, now. I'm scientific, an instrument, an array
reaching out and back. Lava proves Earth's breached crust--

You expect shelter, when you're a child
sheltered for almost a third of your life.
I tried to rebuild our world. Globes and maps

gave us a sense of where we were and were
just once. You wanted to go back to the art
museum. That carefully pieced-together past--

2.

Mausoleum, that carefully pieced-together past
covering you: not a sarcophagus, but a womb
unable to keep you in. A mausoleum, vast
chamber holding many bodies, like a test, like a hand--

But they called it a sarcophagus, a coffin, as if
only one body were contained within. Mine
kept its chirp and beat, still listening for death
pressing toward us through the clearing sky--

Museums we carefully pieced together, passed
our time in or the illusion of our time. Even masked
we were never safe enough to feel our breath

pausing in front of the real. We retreated to the screen.
We were patient, or you were, waiting for vaccines
awaiting approval, like waiting for ourselves--

3.

Abating her fuel, like waiting for myself:
I watched the fire rage for nine days, for some
paradise lost. I watched the liquidators, the forest
they brought down around us, radiation

beating against the trunks like a mad beak.
I watched them haul away once children-
laden branches, watched them clean streets.
Watched as they surveyed ways to seal her in--

Evading school, like uprooting yourselves,
you pace this house become show-and-tell
(nothing of the external world remains

long at our fist of a door before we quarantine
boxes, envelopes, bags. How long viruses cling,
how long we keep our hands from our faces--

4.

How long I kept my hands over my face
until they built hands over her, joints
unsealed, letting in the rain, the ice--
hands grasping some raspy-voiced

prayer. Sarcophagus, inadequate church,
scaffolds telling the stories of murdered saints.
You'll tell me to make of the smoke-stack's reach
steeples releasing connection's remains--

How long I kept your hands from your faces,
each surface in the outside world a virus-
laden threat. I took you to on walks, crowded

trees keeping us from contact with others, urged
you to touch nothing. You asked me how the air curled
particles we couldn't see into movement we could--

5.

Particles I couldn't see burned into movement they could
measure: what escaped from her sarcophagus fissures.
How much she must have loved breaking worlds:
she broke the firmament they built over her.

First, the pines came back. Did I want to break her
tomb, release her, reconnect with her? Or with that place
recovering from her half-death? First pine, then birch.
Bears, wolves. Then birds, but they avoid old nests--

Parts you couldn't see became movement I'd yet
make: had I forgotten the deep collective breath
musicians take before beginning a song?

I was vaccinated, I had to make my body
unlearn its fear of movement, had to carry
you or if not you then the world back home--



6.

You, or if not you, then the world broke the home
sheltering what was left of her. How long had I been
disconnected then. How long until they began a new dome.
Three years after her disaster, I fell silent.

Was it because she could no longer carry me?
I'm not sure I noticed when they stopped my song.
I watched in silence as they covered her, steel
arc the largest thing ever moved on rails. But I said nothing--

You, or if not you, then the world: your home
cracked open. I watch you running in the park nearly alone,
just ahead of us. I can't ask if what you see,

wind-like, is the connection between us breaking
your idea of what it is to be family.
What it is to be home, the only place you've been--

III. Half-Life: Or, Duga Watches the Grandmothers Return to the Exclusion Zone Near Chernobyl

1.

You expect me to tell you about the grandmothers. Instead
I'll ask how many ways there are to destroy the earth, or
this piece of earth I cannot leave. The only place I've been
able to hear her. I've compared atoms to Earth before,

become tedious with listening for news of her. Other worlds
break, magma becomes lava, what we see as giants'
surfaces can panic into storms. Even radiation isn't ours
alone. Enough of that too can destroy us, even from a distance--

You ask me to tell you about my grandmothers. Instead
I tell you about yours. Tell you about how they made
homes your father and I came from, how they bound

family and our ideas of family. None of this is mine
alone. Instead, we drove for days, counting turbines
turning over the flat land between home and home--

2.

Turning through the forest land between home and home,
they came. At first, I thought of them as transmissions,
signals sent to target then returned, as if their echoes
shuddered back anything about where they'd been.

Echoes of an elsewhereness that would absorb
who they were. So they came singing their return
here in the small houses they'd known. Birds
avoid old nests. Women knew what would burn--

Turning through the walls of your grandmother's
home, paintings of flowers. Hadn't I taught you before:
annuals die, leaving their seeds behind?

Each grandmother leads back to another
question: where. As if she could be here,
as if death were a movement in place, in time--

3.

As if death were a movement in place, in time,
they returned from the gray, governable towers,
returned to their tools, attempted to tame
overgrown gardens back into something wilder--

Decay is like that, slow, a kind of progress. I heard
their tools scratching the earth again. My transmitter
disconnected, what else could I know but the ground
turned up to accept what was offered?

As if death were a movement in time, in place,
like force, like seasons, all the rudimentary science
I'd offered you. Sound dies, the weakening signal,

echolocation. Light dies at opaque surfaces, planets
die, stars consuming them in their own deaths.
Plants die, animals die. Viruses too, we say. People--

4.

Plants die, animals die. Vitrify too, we say. People,
given a few hours to collect belongings, had paused
mirror-like in front of them: first, the reactor explodes,
then everyone must seal themselves in a new future. Lost

all but a few pictures. Everything belonging to children
forced to stay. Children or our ideas of children bear resilience.
But that was years ago. When the grandmothers returned,
did they take the paths their children ran through the forest?

Plants die, animals die. Viruses too, we say. People
remain as images, obituaries, regrets. This cell
we've created, bee-like, distinct, readable as a golden disc:

shelter as stories of ancestors born between plagues.
I recite names, places. I recite dates, mark the space
unanswerable now, shaped by questions I might have asked--

5.

Unanswerable now, shaped by questions she might have asked,
does she watch the women returning home? How can she
tell me, now that she has been tested, taken apart, masked
again, what it is for her to see them, grandmothers singing

land back to itself. She wasn't a bird, burned from within.
Still, her body lies, feet grasping some uncaught prey,
or grasping some predator escaping her unfeathered skin.
Watch them with me, praying over her bones, then walking away--

Unanswerable now, shaped by questions you might have asked,
these years shrunk by a virus we might have contained. Not lost.
You question the size of things, wonder if we are made of smaller

parts, smaller ones within those: when do we end?
I try to explain atoms, nuclei, electrons, spaces defined
by our inability to grasp them. Is there love in our failure--

6.

My inability to reach them--is there love in my failure?
What else can I do but resonate their footsteps on this shared land?
You don't believe I can hear their movements, the way they fracture
earth. This is theirs, isn't it? Cesium's half-life already passed--

True, I can't tell you what they say to each other
besides return. Does it matter that I cannot
speak? I want to lie down near them, dog at their fire,
listening. I want to lie down near them, silenced, spent--

Your ability to reframe home: is there love in this failure
to leave? I've given you images of playmates here, peers
you chat with online in half-hour blocks. You want to run

green lengths near the creek with them, fuse
your idea of who they are with the thrill of presence--
Online sessions end. How you clutch this world, imagined--

IV. Epilogue: Or, Duga Considers the Future

Time passes. I imagine what my metal will become
once I'm dismantled, my parts recycled into something less
useless than I've been. I wonder if they'll need another frame
for her, if I can hold what's left of her particles--

But not often. Mostly, I think about how I'd be content as a shovel's blade,
breaking the earth. How the grandmothers would tamp
persistent feet against my step. How I'd be if my wires tamed
their gardens, small fence I'd make, inviting vines, inviting hope--

Time passes. I consider the needle in your small arm
a sort of beginning. Haven't I recycled this form
enough to know I can't keep out the world? I've tried--

After your first dose, we wander White Rock Lake, almost
alone, gray water beneath gray clouds. Like trust,
the wind knocks us a little. You hold my hand, then signal-like, break,
then fly--     

V. Coda: Or, Chernobyl 2022

Khmelnitski, Rivne, South Ukraine.
Zaporizhzhia*; Russian-bombed maternity
hospitals, schools. Did I consider theories
I'd used, invented when I made the mistaken

assumption we'd all go unmasked?
Breathing became conspiracy. Whispering
nostalgia. My children dancing
sanctuary away from sanctuary we'd claimed--

Chernobyl, I used you. Like my home,
I raked meaning around years. Melted down,
you were a ghost riding a train away from the cold

war that ended before my childhood. Returned
women, I used you. Shelter**, disconnected from the grid,
hold, hold. A poem is never the way things end--


* Nuclear power plants operational in Ukraine as of February 2022
** In March 2022, Russian forces disconnected the cooling shelter that prevented nuclear material at Chernobyl's Reactor 4 from the power grid from melting down the shelter and thus leaking.