Blake Leland GEORGE & MARTHA (7/4/08) IN THE ATL They pull the car off to the side of the highway At the top of a rise where there are already Cars in clusters, and folks sitting on top Or standing beside them. And they’re all looking Into the distance beyond darkened tree-lines Where here and there fireworks go up Above shopping centers that are so far away They see the rising trace of sparks, The sudden silent blossoms of light, Before they hear the miniature whoomp Of the mortars, the patter of distant explosions Like a handful of hail on the roof. And after a while, the wind Carries a tang of smoke. Arms around each other’s waists They watch the compact Grand Finales, Kiss, then, quick, back to the car To beat the traffic home. He’s put his wooden teeth on the nightstand, He’s hung his wig on the wig-hook, He’s gone to bed and now dreams come. He dreams of fireworks, up close, Stiff-necked gazing skyward Locked in a dense crowd of oooooooos And aaaaaaaaaas while unseen canisters whistle High into the air and BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! Brilliant sphincters open in the body of the night And out of their fire-rayed irises Come tumbling multitudes of Goods and Services, Rivers of Buffalo hide and sun-bleached Bones, Shiploads of shackled Africans, timbered Trees, Dead soldiers in Blue and Gray and GI tones, Blankets folded with smallpox, Strange Fruits, Immigrant millions, Walt Whitman, Santa Claus, Bands of bright Brass playing light marches, Oil rigs, Apple Pies, Babe Ruth, Babe the Blue Ox, John Coltrane, Crazy Horse, couple of A-bombs, the rest Of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, golfing Astronauts, Abstract Expressionists driving goddamn Big Cars, Flaming crosses, Golden Arches, more Cars, more Cars, Movie Stars, an acrid tang of choking smoke and One last big bang to rattle bones and windows So that he starts up from his bed Thinking it must be thunder, Hoping it might mean Rain. This paean to bombs bursting in air, this half-Beat epideictic celebration of noise and fire, may be my most nearly traditional occasional poem. The situation in the first stanzas is specific to Atlanta. The shape of the poem was not intentional, but when I had finished the primary draft, I suddenly saw that it might be indeed a bomb.
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