Portside

Aftermath

By Chad Davidson

Some places are more striking when destroyed,

when struck.

We are formed of such rebellions: cancer

in the suburbs, riot in the cell block.

Some things just seem to shine in aftermath, neon

glistening down the dark length

of the half-shelled

remnant of a Berlin church

whose name escapes me.

Names are often the only things that do.

Names for savagery, I mean,

and territories brought to ruin.

That smolder on the roadside.

We ask our televisions what really went on

or off

when the backpack blew,

in which desert those women in scarves now seek asylum—

which is no more

than a tent and dirty children eating rice.

Bags of rice, the size of children, air dropped or thrown

from the ass ends of trucks.

Look: there’s a guy in a fedora, sleeves rolled up,

a woman in fictitious burka. They’re there

to interview survivors.

Our hearts go out

but only as the yo-yo might.

A boat somewhere right now is sinking.

Relocation is preamble to the mortaring.

We are so many easily impressed

systems of belief.

We could build a bomb shelter out of them.

Not the natives, who still can’t live on their atoll.

Not the strontium still ravaging, the divers paying all that dough

to pay respects to sharks and Geiger blips

that traffic there.

But the swimsuit named for those explosions,

the bikini,

with which its makers hoped to cause, in Paris,

such a shock.

And did.

CHAD DAVIDSON's most recent collection of poems is From the Fire Hills (Southern Illinois UP, 2014). Recent work appears or is forthcoming in AGNI, Five Points, Gettysburg Review, Kenyon Review, Yale Review, and others. He serves as professor of literature and creative writing at the University of West Georgia near Atlanta and co-directs Convivio, a summer writing conference in Postignano, Italy.