The Near Occasion of Sin
Laurel Blossom
War Poetry Contest 2002 (view all the winners)
Honorable Mention
To Miss Marianne Moore
Hairy face, skin wings, eyeteeth of bone, black
thought of it swinging from the chandelier, upside down above
me in my bed: I too dislike it. I hear whirring
and its squeaky voice in my dreams: it wakes me, years after.
He says be grateful, you could be one of the undead. Even so,
To clip the tiny bombs to their blind bodies,
load them by the hundreds
on B-29s, and drop them where the rising sun could warm them
as they fell, so they wakened like the dream
where you don't hit bottom; then, as if by radar, flew
under eaves, feeding on insects and resting for an hour, until
they exploded, little bat-bombs
burning the whole city flat and everyone smoldering
in it: it makes me sick. He says
this never happened, be grateful
the A-bombs bat-bombs were invented to come after, like letters
in the alphabet of a new world language, worked: Word made
flash. Ah, poetry!
couldst thou make shadows of mine enemies
on walls of Sumitomo Banks and Pentagons, etc., half-lives
decaying in some circle of hell, flapping overhead
or clinging by their little claws
to the one source of firepower in the room: but no,
traitor, you turn me into them, you bite. Even tonight,
when he rolls over to kiss me in his sleep, I shudder
or tremble, thinking of the greener grass that grew
after Hiroshima, the root of our ginger
that scratched through its plastic pot to get at the ground.
