1
O, say can you seeeee
us
from here? The Bomb answers Yes,
dear.
2
Like a wax statue in the low Italian sun, losing form, Il Duce’s
corpse “flung to raging mob,” one subhead reads
in a microfiche daily: how the partigiani men hung him
bat-inverted by his pilloried feet
above a street in Giulino. In the week that followed, a relative
from Napoli sent clipped photos, a mockful note
to our people in the States. Which loosely I translate: ‘Ciao
Lucy — look at him
now: last year’s king. . . .’
3 nucleomituphobia
At present is the cherry-plum
just out of reach — I see it
is poised to drop. I’m picturing, already,
something else
not mentioned but, nonetheless, under-
stood to be waiting
in that sealed-up place our dreaming
should’ve been, that desert
base where bright-green fields held forms
of water, once, twice
their size, cupolas of dew, moisture
we’re made of balanced
on each individual blade I imagine now
as a word for mercy
in a language I don’t know — &, so,
cannot be undone
at present. But even that word for grass
is a weapon.
4 A bridge is a symbol that stands for itself (like god, or soap, or the u.s. of a.), so when it fails, it fails two ways
— what they didn’t know, at first, as they lowered the men, known as
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