During the evening of April 26th 1986 a young engineer at the Chernobyl power plant was on the phone to one of his superiors who was at home. This was in the hours prior to the explosion, the young man at the control desk was puzzled because the manual had lines that were crossed out and other bits added in biro. His boss told him to ‘do the things that are crossed out’. What follows is a sequence of poems crafted in honour of that moment. The sequence is chronological and I have no reason to doubt the authenticity of the material.
San Francisco
Grants Pass
Eugene
Portland
Seattle
Vancouver
Olympia
Missoula
Bozeman
St Paul
Madison
Chicago
Royal Oak
Toronto
Newport
Bethesda
Raleigh
Winston-Salem
Asheville
Asheville corrected
Atlanta
New Orleans
Birmingham
Huntsville
Athens
Athens corrected
