digitally modified from photo found on-line
SWEET
SUGAR SMOKE, 1953
by John
Flynn
We
scavenged sugar beets by
trunkfuls
later to discover only
member
growers could peddle
sugar
beets to the sugar beet plant.
Later
on, they called it North Side,
like
the North Side of Chicago
or
Minneapolis but not Fargo
But
it was just North Moorhead ,
then,
out by the beet plant,
from
which the pall of acrid
smoke
quilted black
the
fallow onion fields,
and
made it tough for
the
mare and the kids
and
the calves
to
breathe.
~
first published in dislocate
