Nick Butler: Former Round River student

Chicago Tribune Newspaper Stand at the
Oscar Mayer plant Madison, WI

Just beyond the guard-shack
Just outside the mill
3 newspaper stands, 3 cities, 3 headlines,
I pass the news on my way into the mill
0000000000Aladdin thermos warm against my palm
From Chicago: 16 Dead In Copter Crash.

Tomorrow—another 16 down.
The day after—another 16 down,
0000000000and again, and again.
In fourth grade our multiplication tables only ran to the 12s,
0000000000144, my mathematical ceiling.
16 times three is 48.
48 Americans down, like sparrows and plate-glass windows
0000000000I see a pile in the sand.

And after the weekend:
000000000016 Dead In Copter Crash.
My abacus is fingers and toes and a forearm of ink.
All the helicopters falling to earth
0000000000Slow as injured angels.
In Irag, beneath the sand, my Sunday school teacher said,
0000000000“The Garden of Eden is buried like treasure.”
16, 32, 48, 64, 80, 96, 112…

An absentee paperboy neglecting his stand.
I never knew—
0000000000Bodies piling up in my mind, 16 at a time,
Sifting down to earth holding hands, dripping M-16s.
Time to watch the horizon come up to hold them hard.
16 Dead In Copter Crash.
The whip-whip-whip of slowing stilling blades.
All 16 remembering spin the bottle in basements of shag-carpet
0000000000Holding hands and closed-eye kisses.

000000000000000--Nickolas A. Butler

Nickolas A. Butler was a meatpacker at the Oscar Mayer plant in
Madison, Wisconsin. He dedicates this poem to his friends in the
fifth floor Slice-Pak and to his soldier buddy Luke Solomonson