Ghost City

Atticus Molloy · poetry · For radiation, for the magic of instability.

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concrete prisms1 overtaken by moss and pine trees
alveoli overgrown bones2 when there’s no foot traffic3
the centerpiece4 open and bleeding into the world,5 like a skull blown open, like an organism,6 the
most dangerous wound in the world

death, in debated magnitudes7
it seeps into the groundwater,8 comparable to grief

colonies of red dogs,9 grandchildren of the survivors of domestication
it was not your fault. you couldn’t understand it if you tried
i wonder, how do you remember kindness?
your grandparents, shot in the street,10 hunted for your own good (or so they say)
but you still run toward our hesitant hands

i cannot dine with the survivors,11 it isn’t advisable
they are all grey by now12
i’d grow greys of my own, fed from their tables and kitchens13
cigarettes left atop an incidental tomb,14
sarcophagus of safety,15 negative pressure of necessity16
human beings, we need science to survive, even if it kills us17

Footnotes

  1. Soviet modernism becomes brutalism when the wallpaper rots away / when the carpets rot away / when the color rots away ↩

  2. The Red Forest (Ukrainian: Рудийй ліс, Russian: Рыжий лес, lit. ‘ginger-colour forest’) is the ten-square-kilometre (4 sq mi) area surrounding the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. / The trees died from this radiation, within days of the initial explosions. / the forest split in color. ↩

  3. The nearby city of Pripyat was not immediately evacuated. / “Please keep calm and orderly in the process of this short-term evacuation.” / they were told they could return in three days / it’s been forty years. / there were fifteen kindergartens in the town ↩

  4. Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant / Vladimir Ilyich Lenin Nuclear Power Plant / no. 4 reactor / The Sarcophagus ↩

  5. SCRAM (AZ-5) / the pin, pulled / the trigger, pulled / The first explosion blew the lid off of the reactor, rupturing fuel channels and severing most of the coolant lines / I want you to imagine two thousand tons of concrete lifted a hundred feet in the air. It hung in the air for ten seconds. / Two thousands tons of concrete goes up, and then [hold ten seconds] it lands. ↩

  6. Alexander Yuvchenko, said that once he stepped out and looked up towards the reactor hall, he saw a “very beautiful” laser-like beam of blue light caused by the ionized-air glow that appeared to be “flooding up into infinity”. / like lightning / like watch-faces / like neon ↩

  7. The Soviet Union’s official death toll is 31 / The UN estimates between 4,000 to 16,000 deaths in total for all those exposed. ↩

  8. Nekhayev, Orlov, and Uskov, knee-deep in a mixture of fuel and water, opened two valves on the 300 line. Due to each man’s dose of over 15Gy (4Gy being the median lethal dose), they did not have the strength to open the valves on the sides. / “The explosion contaminated the soil, water, and atmosphere with material equivalent to that of 20 times the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.” ↩

  9. “At least 302 feral dogs live around the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.” / It is hypothesized that these animals are the descendants of pets left behind during the original evacuation of Pripyat. / rad dogs ↩

  10. While many of these original pet populations were killed by the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs to prevent the further spread of radiation, the remainder survived to reproduce. / the rad dogs are friendly. they come to you, looking for food. ↩

  11. ~100 people still live within the zones / Chernobyl’s Babushkas / “-residents drink highly polluted water and eat food from their radioactive gardens,” / they’re all in their 80s. ↩

  12. they lived through Stalin’s Holodomor in the 1930s. / “We didn’t see anything good. We were naked and barefoot and hungry,” / They lived through the Nazis in the 1940s. / “I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. Never, ever. The things we saw,” / They lived through Russia’s invasion of Pripyat in 2022 / they are determined to survive. ↩

  13. It is strictly forbidden to eat food grown within the Zone. / “Starvation is what scares me, not radiation,” she says. ↩

  14. “Valery Ilyich Khodemchuk, the first casualty of the Chernobyl disaster, killed at the moment of the initial explosion.” / senior operator of the main circulating pump, reactor 4 / he’s still inside / There is a tradition among the workers to leave cigarettes for him on his memorial. ↩

  15. “The completed structure spans 257m, with a height of 105m and length of 150m.” / it was placed in 2016 / it took 30 years to complete. ↩

  16. double walled shell / “this gap is positively pressurised, while the main structure is slightly negatively pressurized.” / air rushes in, not out. ↩

  17. even when it kills us. / Nuclear power stations were presented as achievements of Soviet engineering, harnessing nuclear power for peaceful projects. The slogan “peaceful atom” (Russian: мирый атом) was popular during that time. / “Let the atom be a worker, not a soldier.” / I am a worker, not a soldier. / I am a worker / I am a worker / I am a worker ↩