Centralia
Ashleigh Tomcics
“Trump likes Nickelback”
- Graffiti highway outside of Centralia, PA
grained radon shifts towards us,
color swirls desolate
and the wind blows deviant wishes
the fissures
live& breathe
under loving coats of chemicals&
foot- fall.i wish I was from here.
i have gold. i think
i can feel the ground- breath rise
&fall but maybe that’s just what I
want,something
to not have lost the fight.
the wind groans in anger.
i am facing inevitability dressed in
rock, twigs grasping
to stay flush with
asphalt and hillside alike,
hills rolling to
Ruin.
when i too am dying, this is
the landscape of my body:
cracked in warmth, sugarcoated
nostalgia, fissures
deep& indistinguishable
from landscape.
entropy smells like the
death of dreams, wafting its way
sprayed down this remembered highway;
i am home.
Ashleigh Tomcics is a junior English-Secondary Ed and Creative Writing major who enjoys ridiculous memes, cooking shows, and knitting. Her poetry ranges from beautiful to insane and she likes to think it's pretty good. She also would like you to know that she's never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down, never gonna run around and desert you.
Issue 12
2018