Featured Selection of the Month:
November 2003

The factory is now a gallery
of boards. Few panes remain
astonished by the Newark sky,
whose blue lacks reverence
for history’s gray rations. The logo
on the smokestack—though intact—
has lost its wattage, while the letters
on the sign have long alighted
from their casings.
*
Westinghouse. A household name
once bright as Edison and Tesla
(whose inventions Westinghouse
acquired). The company changed hands
to keep its current alive within the country’s
pulse. Bought a battery of others out.
Became global. Conglomerative.
Innovation is still paramount
though I can’t help but feel they’ve lost
their sense of craft—lost the way one’s occupation
used to manifest itself in appellation:
Cooper, Baker, Light-Bulb Maker.
*
Rails that ran throughout the acme of the factory
—and run today—deliver me each morning
to the station just next door. Corrosion’s rust-
and-pastel palette is attractive to commuters
free to ponder sightlines into New York’s skyline
from the platform. Meanwhile, Route 280’s almost always
at a standstill. Walking by the loading docks sealed off
by chain link fence, I catch a whiff of what reminds me
of my grandfolks’ former basement.
*
My mother’s father cut his steel mill teeth
in Hammond, Indiana, went to night school
to become an engineer, and first kept office
in a corrugated shed with filings underfoot.
As he bends to scan my closeups of
an elevated stop’s decay (the “blue line”
where Milwaukee Ave. meets Western
in Chicago), a frown begins to hairline crack
his mouth and brow. “Poor structural upkeep,”
he maintains, passing the photos on.
“Nice composition,” counters Grandma.
Farmer’s daughter. Painter.

Published in The Newark Metro in September 2003