Zach Eddy
Aluminum Apple
For thirty years of service, they hand you inedible fruit.
A mantlepiece memento for the family to remember,
factory-made, alloyed, and mass-produced offsite
from recycled scrap aluminum. I wonder what he thought
when he peered through the metal window frames
of the Ingot Plant, surrounded by so much tree fruit.
1977’s Wenatchee World reads, “Alcoa Cancer
Studies Show No Cause for Concern at Local Plant.”
Outside, a swallow lands on a metal rooftop.
His obituary says, “50 years doing what he loved.”
In the hospital, he ripped out his own breathing tube.
Mike kept his apple by the television. Now Mother takes it out
on holidays, resting it next to his canned ashes, polished
so bright a distorted reflection appears, a crystal ball,
the aluminum apple, a tumor, or a metal heart shining.
Aluminum Door
The factory sleeps, dreaming
of a mechanical sky and asbestos.
I’m awake, wondering about dissenting
distance and the operation of madness.
Wondering about bruised pears
and looking for fictive kin in all
the automated faces
on an ingot-packed freight train.
You are me, wondering about the
color of smoke and roll-up doors.
A potline humming its one-note
tune in a shuttered warehouse.
A collared dove inhaling
furnace fumes, lured in by crows. I am
haunted when I close my eyes
by broken mirrors and a safety lock.
Aluminum Bike
Bicycling backwards, I pedal straight
into oncoming traffic. Down the center line.
Across the Sellar Bridge, Freebase Eric climbs.
The Mayor of South Wenatchee lifts his mug,
grins, offers a toast to the down and outs,
throwaways like me, as I throw a Traffic Light
and light another passing Wally’s Tavern.
At dusk, the town begins to glow
and warp, like radioactive tree fruit,
all brain rotted out and leaking cherry seed oil.
Atop the handlebars of someone else’s bike,
this river valley view is hard to match.
A match is all it takes to torch a home.
Right now, I’m high on speed and have to focus.
So I close an eye and aim for the mountain’s saddle,
the gap between the peaks inching closer.
Up Mission, I forgot to signal. Down
Chelan, I forgot my name and the night
you said to go. So gone is what I am,
and going faster, I forget the horns.
The mess. Forget the man who isn’t me.
Now I’m shirtless. Screaming. With my back
to my future, watch me face my past.
Zach Eddy is a former aluminum worker. His writing has appeared in Northwest Review, High Desert Journal, Terrain.org, The Comet Magazine, Poetry Northwest, The Confluence, Shrub-Steppe, and elsewhere. His poem "Fish Eyes" was awarded the 2016 Wenatchee Valley College Earth Day Poetry Prize. He currently teaches English composition and creative writing at Wenatchee Valley College and teaches historical fiction workshops for the Wenatchee Valley Museum & Cultural Center.
Artwork: “R U Alive?” by Daniel Lurie
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