Ash Pond-3

The plant plan’s for it
to produce steam power
obfuscatory stacks cap
in place sunk expenditure
filed failure to disclose
instability issues the plan he
said it has a lot of moving
parts per dewatering AP-3
hole the water brownlit
pit & clouded as if fouled
what’s kept wet’s what
can’t breathed or better
yet believed I saw slow
alielluminated flow take
hypotensive knout cuprous
slick coattail can’t touched
eventually carp initiative
I don’t see my mussel
shells that I used to see
on the sand I don’t hear
the frogs at night singed
if what’s burned that doe
sn’t rise if ash rises as
incinerated flocculant
compensatory question
of the ash dead plant
matter answer the decay
then decommission culm
air deep scintilla burial to
laek a leak esophageal grack
millefleur a farmer’s lung
the plan to use an anything
the does or doesn’t move

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Alicia Wright is the author of You’re Called by the Same Sound (Thirdhand Books, 2025). Her poetry appears in Kenyon Review, The Paris Review, mercury firs, and elsewhere. She lives in Iowa City, where she edits Annulet and Annulet Editions, and works as managing editor of The Iowa Review.

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