Devon Balwit | Chernobyl (III) | Poets Resist

Devon Balwit’s most recent collection is titled A Brief Way to Identify a Body (Ursus Americanus Press). Her individual poems can be found in Jet Fuel, The Worcester Review, The Cincinnati Review, Tampa Review, Apt (long-form issue), Tule Review, Grist, and Oxidant Engine among others.

Devon Balwit’s Website.

Also by Devon Balwit: Risk Being/Complicated We are Procession, Seismograph A Brief Way to Identify a Body

Previously in Glass: A Journal of Poetry: We Call It That Review of Barnburner by Erin Hoover

Poets Resist
Edited by Jemshed Khan
May 28, 2019

Devon Balwit

Chernobyl (III)

Don’t touch him, you want to tell the fireman’s wife, but how can she not? This is the father of her unborn child. That his blistered hands on her still-slim belly burn like no other flame is beyond belief. All she can do is hold him as he melts away. Later she may regret parting the plastic to stand by his side. Now, she stares bleakly into the crater that was their future. She holds his empty shoes as the cement truck buries his lead coffin. When the sirens blare, we imagine we choose, as if our fates, our choices, were not determined — Our whole lives have been a rehearsal and show if we will stare down risk or, cowardly, go.