Clean Fill

Betty doesn’t like to hear me say it, Town 
beyond saving. She has a clipping now, 
Gardening News Roundup — Compost Your Car.

It’s true.
Bring me your tired refrigerators, your toasters, 
your sorry plastic bags. 

Shred them. Bacterialize them. Presto compo: 
clean fill. EPA-approved. Junked cars 
actually used to landscape Disney World.

Why not compost the mill? Betty says.

So how deep do you dig so run-off doesn’t croak
the already scuzzy Tuscarawas? 
Do the vacant stores get shredded, too,

and the decrepit high school whose bond levy 
goes down every year anyway?
And what about the poor union schmoes

marching up Main Street, even five-year-olds
with signs, Give My Dad’s Job Back — do we 
throw them in, too? Blood is good for the soil. 

How much bacteria does it take
to eat a dead steel mill?

Sue D. Burton| Praise
Contents | Mudlark No. 60 (2016)