From "Oatcakes" (A Zine) by Jeffrey Snodgrass

I first went to the space when I was seventeen. Some friends and I were just messing around. We never expected to find what we did. The machine--there's no way we ever could've predicted that, none at all. What we did do was look around, played the tourist, and half wondered how anyone could have built a place like that, and why. The why part was the biggest thing in my mind. We had a reason for what we did. That much should be obvious. What we didn't know, of course, was that the evil of the place would change our lives in unexpected ways. What do you mean by evil? Oh, a presence, a kind of brute force. So not an intelligence? No, most certainly not, not an intelligence. I can tell you for a fact, and I do mean a fact, I saw the thing. What did it look like? A bubble, an orb of energy. Were you frightened? Not at the time: I was with my friends. But later, at home, yes. How much later? A few days, not many. I woke up in the middle of the night and there it was, an orb at the foot of my bed. I see.
I'm thinking of different ways to look at the space. At how it captures light. A vast shadow creeps across the concrete floor. I wait for the penumbra to engulf me. I cannot describe my sense of hope. All I find is a rusty pair of pliers. And a screw.
I don't see why you're so interested in that old place. I asked my grandfather your question. He said many men used to work in that factory. And even some women. That they built airplane engines during the war. He says it's been closed a long time. He says to forget it.

Hips by Jeffrey Snodgrass

His eyes flicked up and down her body. Hips too wide. And with that he summarily dismissed her as a possibility, as an option, as a human being. She no longer held any potential as a human, one endowed with a unique personality, a self, personhood. And so it happens every day, over and over again without relief. The looking, the asking, the denial.