1:23:48

I was the Chief Engineer

At Chernobyl

On April 26, 1986.

We workers

Didn’t know

About design flaws,

Building shortcuts,

That the reactor

Was a nuclear bomb

Waiting to ignite.

My fellow workers

Didn’t know:

That I had been exposed

To massive radiation

Years before;

That leukemia

Had claimed my son;

That Chernobyl

Was my white whale.

One pump worker

Was vaporized

In the first explosion.

Fifty tons of nuclear fuel

Blown into the night,

Ten times Hiroshima.

Seven hundred tons

Of radioactive graphite

Mixed with gas

Equals

A fog of death

That burns to death

From the inside

Out.

First, vomit.

Next, nuclear tan.

Then, blackened skin,

That peels like paper.

Finally, agony

And welcome death.

The radioactive cloud

Spread around the globe,

Worming its way

Into

Everything.

Sentenced to seven years

Hard labor,

I was released early

Insane

From the inside out.

I alone

Survive

To tell

This tale.