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| Gary Fincke |
Gary
Fincke's latest collection is Brining Back the Bones: New and Selected
Poems (2016, Stephen F. Austin University). His next book will be The
Killer's Dog, which won the 2015 Elixir Press Fiction Prize and will
appear early next year. He is the Charles Degenstein Professor of
Creative Writing at Susquehanna University.
The
Chernobyl Swallows
In April,
near the anniversary
Of
catastrophe, barn swallows returned,
Flying inside
the exclusion zone to
Nest in the
radioactive ruins.
Like
disciples, the swaddled scientists
Marveled.
The work crews, weeks later, toasted
The newly
hatched, especially the fledged
With albino
feathers after they soared
Like their
siblings, devouring insects
With the
ravenous hunger of swallows.
For months,
the left-behind celebrated
How weak the
worst was, and when the swallows,
,
No
exceptions, flew southward, how feeble
Apocalypse
could be. But come spring, not
One of the
white-flecked birds returned, only
The ordinary
nesting and spawning
Their own
mutations. Families, by then,
Had moved
back to where the world was quiet
And
uncrowded, reclaiming rooms inside
The official
radius of poison.
And through
succeeding springs, no flight with white
Above them,
just guards and squatters were left
To praise
what they took for heroism,
Even if only
among the swallows.
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