smudges, they became smudges, places where people
used to stand, sit, exist, before the blast, easier to
see shadows than the melted faces, missing eyes
enola gay, little boy, happy nursery rhyme in the sky
where men dropped the end of life, bulbous war container
children in the death zone like charcoal burned with no grill
truman’s august angst, questions like grant’s total war to
conclude inferno, force bushido to surrender their young kamikaze
suicide desperation, a nation’s emperor unwilling to stop suffering
until finished, after nagasaki, inception of nuclear era
destruction, non-fiction, we know, we know, but better
to kiss strangers in streets than think of erasing future’s time
Daniel W. Polk 