Nothing uglier than the greenhouse slab of this structure, hundreds of panes broken or missing, the thousand still intact so dusted with coal
they look like many rotten bruises. The conveyor lurching to the piles of crushed anthracite looks spindly as a flicker of spider web.
Below it, a payloader and truck interact, puny vehicles to aggress on such a heap. The lower part of the breaker
is three stories of poured concrete. I press one hand against it and feel an ancient earthen cool simmer through me. At my feet
a pair of discarded tires, old-fashioned wide whitewalls, relax in the filth, their working lives done. This breaker won’t stand here much longer,
the anthracite seams exhausted, whole villages collapsing above burning abandoned mines. As I kick at the treadless old tires
I feel all Pennsylvania and almost all America shudder with the secret pleasure of those slow underground fires.
Grain Elevators, Milwaukee
On the lake stands a cluster of eight grain elevators, concrete patched with thick black strokes of tar, an abstract expressionist statement chiding pleasure boats docked nearby. Franz Kline drunker than usual would have signed this construction if he’d seen it. I wonder if the people of Milwaukee appreciate its vigor and stark penetration of industrial pieties, appreciate the way form overcomes content, forcing the eye to understand despite our pictorial expectations. Maybe the city has torn it down by now, but in the Seventies this structure so engaged me I spent a whole day watching light slide across its grainy surface, the huge brush strokes bleeding at their edges into the gray, the reflection in the brownish lake shuddering like an aurora. I learned so much about painting that day that I gave it up for good and went home happy and drank a toast to Franz Kline and other artists with visions larger than mine.
William Doreski lives in Peterborough, New Hampshire, and teaches at Keene State College. His most recent book of poetry is The Suburbs of Atlantis (2013). He has published three critical studies, including Robert Lowell’s Shifting Colors. His essays, poetry, fiction, and reviews have appeared in many journals.