Page 26 - WTP Vol. IX #6

19
The Sun Shone
like most days in May and some senators stopped to watch
the smoke thicken and twist
in the unsteady wind.
A few pointed, some half- smiled as if they weren’t sure exactly how to feel. Even though it was on fire, the poem
sat stone still in the street. Even with the acrid smell, even as the poem’s face turned to ash and fell away,
most thought this was just
one more trick, a well-played trope setting up the poem to make another impossible comeback:
raising its fist—traffic be damned, baring its breast, saying what poems usually say about war, about sex and the soul in anguish
about the way this country packs its maw with black bodies but the poem
sitting in the lotus did not blink or move or seem to notice
the unhappy cars, the well-fed White House lawn
or the curious tourists
aiming their phones for a selfie: haze in their hair, heat wrinkling the light behind them. The poem
never said why it turned to fire for its final word—maybe it was all the years getting up
getting dressed, tuning its throat,
only to find itself disappeared in America: Jabba the Hut, Commander in Chief
filling his cup with drool—and still the raucous cheers, still the red caps rallying like a virus.
There’s only so much a poem can do in solitary before it’s just alone
humming to itself among things scrapped beneath the Xbox minds.
Why not fire?
Why not make Meet the Press
ask why—just one day
of good suits and well-trained faces discussing who it was:
Who did that poem think it was?
But the poem doesn’t think
about itself. The poem doesn’t think anything. This is me talking,
me watching, while the poem burns.
tim seiBles