dawn stretches awake a revised July
only scantily clad in red, white and blue—
the fashion outdated
the forty-third detonation may be final
as the Boston Pops thunders the 1812 Overture
to set fireworks flaring over the Charles—
no gallant one to secure the event
after Mugar retires
perilous Benghazi blazed and bled
as situation room stars fretted the U.S.
uniforms might insult the locals
mourning light bursts with proof
the streams on the ceiling of Istanbul’s terminal
are blood spatter, the gleams glass shards
on the broad floor
the underside of my Snapple lid reads: It is against the law to use ‘The Star- Spangled Banner’ as dance music in the state of Massachusetts.
Phantasmagoria
Through my new glasses
the scene twisted
because of a grinding mistake
in the lab, light refracting
improperly for focus on my retina.
“The optics are bad,”
news reporters keep repeating.
They don’t mean
the science of light.
They’ve ground the word
to refer to external appearances,
the semblance or impression.
If the look of an event
is labeled as flawed,
any actual impropriety or illegality
can be smudged, distorted,
overlooked, and the truth
blurred if it is, in fact, still binary.
Accuracy is blind in these spectacles.
Shadows disappear completely
when there is no light.
