‘Straw by the ton dropped onto the oil / men with pitchforks in dozens of small boats / Bullzoders piled it into great gooey masses / vacuum hoses sucked globs of oil into tank trucks afloat on barges or parked along the shores. / “Even where there were no heavy oil patches, I found an iridescent film” / When he got home and washed his neoprene diving suit, it fell apart / “You couldn’t pay a person to do this job” / gummy tides coated and choked the mollusks that cling to the rocks. / Others, pounded by surf, wound up as shapeless blobs washed onto a beach, their bodies growing cold, their insides ravaged by swallowed oil. Some men sat down and wept.’
Matt Fratson
visual artist
