My award winning poem:
"I Sing the Body Radioactive"
After “I Sing the Body Electric” by Walt Whitman.
Written entirely from the perspective of Coldwater Creek itself. As if a human entity.
For those unfamiliar with St. Louis’s environmental history, the creek became a dumping ground for radioactive waste stemming from Mallinckrodt’s uranium processing, a part of the Manhattan Project for the creation of the Nuclear Bomb. It’s a devastating, ongoing legacy that poisoned the watershed and generations of citizens.
Kids who grew up playing in that water have spent their adult lives fighting rare, aggressive cancers. Entire North County neighborhoods have been gutted by illness and premature death.
#poem #proofofwork
