Robert Gibb: Deskulling the Slag Pots

i.

You’d see them in the railyard,

Coupled and waiting in line

To be topped off with that cargo

Tapped from the blast furnaces:

Magma they’d freight nightly

Along the ridge of the hill

Where the pots were tipped,

Their guttering eruptions spilled

From the horizon’s line of fire.

They stopped us in our tracks,

Those auroras of white-hot scoria

Runneling the side of the sky.

ii.

Slag that sat in the pots too long

Hardened into the plugged

And cindery, dust-caked skulls

They’d then shuck and trepan,

The crane’s pile-driver chisel

Dropped to rupture the crusts,

The molten dross of oxides

Disgorged in one sudden gush.

A core that matched the planet’s,

I always thought, or mimicked

The cosmic egg at the Big Bang

Exploding its fiery yolk.

Copyright 2018 Robert Gibb

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