BREAKING NEWS: OSCAR BAIT
shakycam isn’t cinematic
the fighter jet growls
aren’t computer generated
beneath the breathmasks
the children aren’t pretending
to heave nor did their father
swallow a penny to simulate
the right amount of retching
the lights didn’t go out on cue
the extras didn’t get paid
to shriek in Arabic the women
wearing hijabs aren’t masking
American accents even though
there is a reporter nobody
is interested in interviews
when the babies in incubators
resemble rotini before
the water comes to a boil
two nurses share a moment
they’d rather the babies died
in their arms than in the air
-strike on an open ground
unceilinged babies in blankets
are lined up one of them will
grow up to enter the United
States Muslim Registry live
the exiled Jew’s life in
the twenty forties, the twenty
first century foxes would
option this story summon
someone from the hurt locker
to direct this motion picture
deemed fifty-seven percent
fresh says the review
aggregator shocking beautiful
-ly shot and moving at times
Aleppo like Baghdad
like Tripoli like Kabul feels
a tad too rehearsed to be real.
—Poets Respond
November 20, 2016
__________
Karthik Purushothaman: “Wary as I am of its extended metaphor, I write this poem in reaction to a disturbing video posted yesterday morning by Al Jazeera, filmed during an airstrike taking place at a children’s hospital in Eastern Aleppo. Owing to Hollywood’s long-time lifelike depiction of loss of lives and trauma in conflict areas, I find myself immensely desensitized to the realities of such violence. Al Jazeera’s frontline video, however, wrenched me out of my numbness, and I shed tears for news on destruction for the first time in many years.” (website)
