August 13, 2017

Megan Fernandes

NUKEMAP.COM

It is 2:37 a.m. and I make myself eat an apple while on the laptop, Alec Baldwin
is hosting MatchGame, an experiment in the ageless art of game show hosting
like orange light diving back into the ’70s. In an open tab,
I am dropping nukes on New York City to watch the airburst
swell into a new species of hydrogen fruit. I do this over and over
until each bomb becomes a son that you detonate virtually into the night:
Davy Crockett and Little Boy, Fat Man and Ivy Mike, Gadget, Castle Bravo and Tsar Bomba,
all of the bombs are named for boys with fathers from Pakistan and Russia,
sly America or the green seawaters of a Korean dream. Some of the really bad nukes
only have numbers and are unnameable like B-83
because you can’t name something that can kill 1.8 million people
even if you are its mother.

You detonate the bomb and listen to “Gravity Rides Everything.”
You detonate the bomb and still think the ’90s will save you.
You tell your roommate that if the bomb goes off above 39th, you might both survive.
New York City is the default target on nukemap.com. This is so unquestioned that you clutch
your O’Hara and write David Trinidad in Chicago a handwritten letter to tell him
about nuke anxiety. He doesn’t even know you well, but he was nice once in the lobby
of the Marlton on 8th street when you recited Creeley and talked for three hours
and lately you only want to be around people over sixty.
You still expect them to save you. You still believe in elders.
You can get the second season of MatchGame on abc.com for free. You can watch
all your favorite comedians from 1992 come to life, resurrected like clay prophets, saying
that you can live in the television where nothing will incinerate you.
You are back in Seinfeld’s apartment and all that matters is that Jerry doesn’t want to date
someone with man hands. All our futures are like time beating backwards into sitcoms
with the laugh tracks of the dead and the apple in your mouth is now an organism
you slew in your throat and each of your sons—Davey and Mike
and Bravo and Fat Man—are standing on top of a heap of nuclear soil
that was once a very specific girl, let’s call her Ana,
and they are asking you to forgive them
like any mother would.

from Poets Respond

__________

Megan Fernandes: “The poem is responding to the growing nuclear anxiety in the world via a somewhat obsessive and panicked use of a website nicknamed nukemap.com, which allows you to assess the world’s arsenal of nuclear weapons, fallout, and casualties from potential warfare.” (website)

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August 14, 2016

Jackleen Holton

OLYMPIA

The news has gone so far beyond absurd
that I can’t watch it anymore; the little boxes
with their talking heads all talking
about the same damn thing. So I switch
the channel again, let myself be mesmerized
by the swimmers with their exquisite butterfly
wings, the way their bodies undulate
through the water, rising open-mouthed,
as if in praise, then diving down, making it seem effortless.
And I’m reminded of Leni Riefenstahl’s film Olympia,
documenting the 1936 games in Berlin,
and how, as the movie progresses, the athletes, in shadowy
black and white, leave the stadium behind, turn
godlike, their sculpted bodies blossoming
like time-lapse flowers in the sky.
Yesterday, scrolling down my Facebook feed,
I read about a woman in Missouri who saw Donald Trump’s
likeness in a tub of butter, the way once-upon-a-time
somebody was always glimpsing the Virgin Mother
in everything. But there it was, the face
I see in every other post, bubbling up in the yellow
spread, bulbous mouth frozen mid-holler.
The swimmers in the individual medley form a graceful V
like a flock of soaring geese, the pool morphing into
Riefenstahl’s majestic sky. I have a friend who can see
the spirit animal in everyone. For her, every trip
to the grocery store is a safari. But I understand it now,
watching these swimmers mount their blocks;
this one’s a gazelle, that one, a panther.
Leni Riefenstahl loved Hilter. Her beautiful films
were the glorious Aryan face of his regime.
And before the ceremonies began, her camera lingered
on him, his right arm raised to a surging sea of outstretched arms.
Though the mood is festive, her chiaroscuro
montage takes on the somber tones of history.
But today, I love the swimmers for what our animal bodies can do
when the spirit wants it enough. I lean forward as the one
in the middle lane closes in on the world record line.
Someone strung up a confederate flag at a Trump rally
yesterday, which, I told my husband is exactly what I would do
if I were a protester: I’d disguise myself as an asshat,
hoist it up and wait for the cameras.
But of course that wasn’t a joke, either.
Riefenstahl disavowed the Nazis after the war,
but I wonder if her love lived on in some secret bunker
of her heart where she only dreamed in black and white.
Another record is broken, a new medalist stands
on the platform. I can’t help it, my eyes well up.
The lady in Missouri says she thought for a moment
about putting her tub of butter on eBay
to see what she could fetch for it, but in the end
she just wanted buttered toast, so she dipped a knife
in, and handily scraped away the apparition
of that little, angry face.

Poets Respond
August 14, 2016

[download audio]

__________

Jackleen Holton: “The Trump campaign imploded this week, although it has been headed in that direction for some time, and although the media continues to milk the sideshow for ratings. If there is any symbolic meaning to the butter sighting, it may be, as Jan Castellano, the woman who found the contorted face looking back at her from a tub of Earth Balance said, she hoped his campaign ‘melts away like butter.’ But that can’t happen if we continue to give this candidate our attention and energy. Meanwhile, the Olympic games provided a welcome, sometimes inspiring distraction. While the precise nature of filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl’s relationship with Adolph Hitler was not known, she did praise him effusively in a letter she wrote during the war, and she benefited greatly from the Nazi regime in a way that only a few individuals can with such a system in place.” (website)

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