A Summer Job

 Jesse Doiron

August 27, 2023

The Caddo called it “Nachawi,”

but everyone I knew

just said it was “the river.”

We plied it every Tuesday

all of summer ’69 –

I and Johanne Wiedenhoff. 

He had escaped the Nazis. 

I had escaped the draft. 

River never could escape.

We sampled up and down

 the waterway – at discharge 

terminals of sludge.

Broken eggs along the banks, 

‘gators, gar, and nutria, 

Cajuns in the shallows.

The river’s smell was pungent, 

tasting of petroleum, 

burnt methanol, and benzene.

Our bottles of gray water – 

corked and labeled, sent to lab – 

called the Neches dead. 

Jesse Doiron has worked in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia as an educator and consultant. His teaching experience ranges from English for international business at the UC – Berkeley Extension in San Francisco to creative writing at the Mark Stiles Maximum Security Prison for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.