MAY DAY by Kim Mattson
Kim Mattson May Day 1986 Everything on the outside is the same this morning. On the outskirts of Kiev, our farmland overturned, the cows’ mouths grinding in silent motion. Across the table, he stares: You must promise me . Lids burdened with a scientist’s insight. Around his mouth tight lines draw willful fingers, instruct, forget what you know , forbid everything he has told me. Atomic lesion. For days, a white-hot graphite fire unquenchable, swelling: black clouds churning epidemic. When will they tell the people? Words are husks, vomit. Even here, hours from the explosion, nausea. M...