Fracture

There’s gas in my backyard.
I receive an envelope
from some company asking:

“Can we search for gas
beneath the acres of green forests
that seem to have no end?

In return
green bills will spill
into your bank account.”

The next vision from my window:
yellow and metallic
bulldozers scooping sod and humus

An ice cream scooper
tunneling to the world’s end
and soon they will find their treasure.

Next? Tremors rattling china
off my wife’s shelf
family portraits crashing to the floor

My foundations splitting –
but at least I’m alive and breathing
no injuries from human error.
.
The deer and the hares long gone
the dogs’ howls silent in the evening
a mound of sepia sludge from rain –

That’s their home by the way
all we hear split rock, the churning
and whirring of drills, no trees left.

They inject toxic water
into the earth’s soul
tarnishing the sun’s reflected façade.

The green still present
has no value anymore
rotting in the vaults of our den.

The dens of the creatures that lived out there
scooped clean
empty and lifeless.

All that air invades our lungs
two charcoal boulders
been smoking two packs a day.

Two months have passed
and my visions are eclipsed
by the roars of machines.

By Kevin Risner

Biography:

Kevin Risner is a product of Ohio and has lived there for most of his life except for brief periods of time in England and Turkey. At the present, he resides in the Cleveland area where he is ESL Coordinator at the Cleveland Institute of Art. His poetry can be found in Red Paint Hill, Red Flag Poetry, Silver Birch Press, the murmur house, and elsewhere.