Spring Road

The Factory Artefact
by Jasmine Gardosi

Turn left – or right. Depends which platform you’re on.
That’s right – look down, to that tunnel, or whatever it is.
You know the one I’m talking about: that brutalist slab
of concrete brutalising your eyeline, the cemented block
that squats over the end of the station like a jealous troll,
or the dead-eyed visor of an iron giant, dropped on the skyline:
forgotten. This is the blunt tooth of a multi-story car park,
molar worn down into disuse: the skull of the Lucas worksite.
Walk a little closer until you’re peering underneath – yeah,
you see it: this dystopian burrow. This canopied valley.
You hear that? The ghosts of clanging. How the underbelly
growls with the memory of dynamos. Starter motors.
Gas turbines. Aerospace. Things got started here.

You see the light at the other end there? That bright spark
from the past? See how it crawls through, under the dark,
the dust, the grime, magnetised to tomorrow, how it bursts
into today. How it got here. How it got us here.
And now we ride. Now we drive. Now we fly.