“To find a form that accommodates the mess, that is the task of the artist now.” – Samuel Beckett
Fat Man Little Boy
A new day breaks
The earth forever changed
Turns with an awful ache
And again the sun upon
Frosted morning fields
Roads lined with pickup
Trucks jeeps and vans
The animals flee from man
Boys play with their toys
Zoom focus boom god
And country beer broads
And banging this is the
Endtime winter coming on
The human hunting season
The newspaper reports
The arrest of two naked
Hunters in Michigan
Bare except for shoes
Saving I suppose their souls
The fat man opposite
The one with a gorilla’s gait
A teacher of the ancient
Tongue of Latin relates
Not Vergil’s rosy prophecy
Of an incipient golden age
And a savior’s birth
But the tale of his father-
In-law and how yesterday
Way up behind his old
House up on the mountain
Side he somehow shot
Gunned himself in the back
Of his meaty thigh
Or was shot by some
Unknown deer assailant
No one knows who or why
Later in another news
Paper a report reveals
How the cops barely
Could drag him out
Of the thick woods so
Fat was he enormous
Overwhelming too much
To bear unimaginable fact
Fat Man Little Boy
It wasn’t a toy
That shattered your world
Set blood dripping guts
Hanging carcasses to carve
Skin blackened in a flash
Everywhere everywhere no
Where to run escape flee
Forevermore forevermore
The animals are at it again
Flash run Fat Man Little
Boy the dear victims lie
Still eyes staring nowhere
Blood trickling from corners
Of gaping mouths victims
Before the deadly thrust
Of the great hunter’s
Perverted lust
Fat Man Little Boy
A new day breaks
The earth forever changed
Turns with an awful ache
The animals are at it
Again
Little Boy 6 August 1945 Hiroshima
Fat Man 9 August 1945 Nagasaki
Edward Curtin is a writer whose work has appeared widely. He teaches sociology at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. His website is http://edwardcurtin.com/
