After Re-Reading Corso’s Bomb Outside Of Santa Fe
by John Michael Flynn
It begins making no sense, meaning all sense
during a whimsical examination of a yucca
plant in a motel courtyard.
I imagine atomic fears sounding off in 1959.
I hear inscribed across the desert’s edges
one more oily echo willing to sell as legacy
the dust we’ve fractured in our wake.
I walk into my careless room seeking epiphanies.
Air through an open window instructs my skin.
I listen to more desert winds and passing trucks.
Stunted by perplexing needs
I consider evidence, the slaughter required
for an empire to make its mark.
At Baneberry in 1970 the radioactive dust cloud
rose three kilometers high.
This was the exclamation mark of a new insight
siring wells, containment procedures,
underground shelters, stand-offs
in mercenary exchanges toward potential apocalypse.
I face my uncomfortable bed,
hear a child wailing, scorched somewhere –
always a war to think of
as I move to the comfort of bottled water,
drink, swallow, switch on my reading lamp,
the ark that is light no real consolation.
Gyroscope Review 25
!