In this elegiac poem, a ghostly goddess lingers in derelict factories, ‘a Midas inside-out’ who represents industrial decline and ruin
Our Old Lady of the Rain by Jane Commane
She was older, iron-tasting tang,
the smell of damp girders about her.
She’d had blueprints once, hundreds of them,
kept in a plan chest, maplewood drawers
as wide as a kitchen table, and as deep.
As a child, I felt ghosts occupied certain buildings, the factories and warehouses in yet-to-be gentrified docklands
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