Poetry: OHIO

Republic Technologies, Lorain, Ohio, June 14, 2002 —

— Kent State University, Kent, Ohio, May 4, 1970 —

                             

For Bruce Bostick

 

when the owners of the steel mill

washed their hands

of paying the workers’

pension plan

 

because the corporation filed

for bankruptcy in 2002

and the courts deemed

that contract null and void

 

a steelworker dropped dead

from the meaning of the betrayal

and the gunshot

from his own hunting rifle

 

all his life the worker had worked

on the line

based on that

pension

 

the hope and dreams

of retiring after everything

all those years of working

in the mill

 

when the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation

decreed OK

for the owners to bolt

because of the bankruptcy

 

paving the way

for every owner

in auto, airline,

trucking, and steel to do the same

 

it could have been

a gunshot to the heart

of the workers movement

 

the workers protested

at the capital

their lawyers appealed

to the Bush-appointed court the outrage

 

cutbacks, layoffs,

health care, pensions

 

a contract is a contract

if we workers refused

to honor a contract

we would be put in jail

 

but the courts which had once

upheld the pension system

upheld the ripping

of the very same contract

 

the big business newspapers

which had condoned organized labor

now upheld a company’s

sacred bottom line

 

I think the word had gone out

now the Cold War was over,

no longer necessary to broadcast

capitalism as superior to socialism

 

any agreement with the AFL-CIO

was an obstacle

to the new world order

multinational corporations sought to build

 

a new world order

of cheapening labor,

new technology,

and more profits

 

walls between nations

must fall

for capitalists,

not for workers

 

pensions for steel workers

should go the way with

unions and Social Security

and the eight-hour day

 

only the newspaper

of the steelworkers’ union

noted the strange irony

of history

 

how this worker,

killed by Republic Technologies,

had family ties to another event

in Ohio state history

 

this one from days

of protests

against the Vietnam War

 

how that steelworker’s brother

protesting next to a young woman

had become something

of a legend in the area

 

because of a famous photograph

as she kneeled

next to his stricken body

on a college lawn

 

her hands

over her mouth

a look of horror

as if forever on her face

 

as if she saw

on the horizon

a long train

coming

 

as if she saw

a war, though still

far off, beginning

to shamble home

 

yes, brothers and sisters,

you know

the photograph

I mean now

 

bombers flying high

over Vietnam fields and jungles,

troops facing protesting students

in the heartland of America

 

the chants against the war,

fists lifted in the air,

the connections between things,

the gunshots

 

the bodies falling to the ground

the line of protesters gasping back,

the American dream, the American scream,

the silence

 

yes, brothers and sisters,

you know

the photograph

I mean now

 

that other Ohio time,

that other Ohio place

 

the protester

fallen to the ground

was the dead steelworker’s

brother

 

and the woman screaming

next to his crumpled body

was  because he had been slain

by the Guard at Kent State

 

(Previously published in Blue Collar Review.)