BEE LB

iron dream

once, iron mountain was a sign of escape. in the end,
it was only a road sign in the rearview.
eight years and so much distance.

ironwood yields heavier than water, though it’s not a name
to be relied on. the iron horse was once a term for steam engines,
my hometown once a tight lace of track. not my hometown but 

a town i called mine homed a bar called the iron horse,
though i never went. another sign i passed without marking.

down here there’s a steel horse on woodward’s art avenue,
same woodward as the dream cruise but it’s not a dream. 

the dream is the distance between one self, stuck in lake superior,
and the other self, stuck here on dry land. the dream is two
becoming one or else never having split in the first place. 

in the dream i walk through my own footprints, follow my trail
back to a start i don’t remember. went to copper harbor, scoured
the mines, watched the great metal beasts as if they might breathe life 

or coal smoke. felt like a dream but wasn’t. felt like stepping into a history
that lead to my own but i don’t know enough about it to say.

when ma was young she moved to nevada, lived in a trailer with her aunt
and uncle and all the cousins, played in the quarry the trailer sat in back of. 

sometime before that in alabama or arkansas or maybe even kentucky
were the family miners, weak lungs, strong arms, rough hands.
details from the dream of knowing. my hands are soft, my arms are limp, 

but weak lungs still run true. ma’s grappa died of emphysema before i was even
the start of a thought. my grandma died on the bathroom floor, window open
in winter. ma’s been smoking since she was twelve, hacks up half a lung regardless 

of how many times she’s had to quit. big brother gets bronchitis
every year, little brother has an inhaler, i had pneumonia not long after i was born
and haven’t known how to breathe since.

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BEE LB is an array of letters, bound to impulse; a writer creating delicate connections. They have called any number of places home; currently, a single yellow wall in Michigan. They have been published in FOLIO, Figure 1, The Offing and Harpur Palate, among others. Their portfolio can be found at twinbrights.carrd.co and their workshops can be found at poetryasplay.carrd.co.