smelter

last winter dad told me a man at his work
was burned alive in a vat of molten lead.
he works in a battery factory. today i am looking 
at a busy street & wondering how many of my father 
are curled inside bellies of passing vehicles. then, if maybe,
there are still cars moving with a flicker of that man 
eaten by flames. i look up pictures of car battery anatomies. 
staring into the folds of mechanical hearts. 
i am tracing assembly lines in my blood. knuckles
& respirators. i want softness for our bodies.
a graveyard where cars can go to become mammals.
where fathers sleep & wake up with pockets full of gold.