Vox Populi
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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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