Aftermath
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.