portrait of a nuclear family
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the father is home
feeding his brain tumor terminally
with sparse scalp hair he earned in
the uranium mine of a slow death aphrodisiac
he breathed working twenty years
to buy early expiration rites
the mother is crying
in the rocking chair of miscarried conceptions
with bare normalities sinewless
in her barren womb...that doesn't bloom
the desert body of motherhood
empty with the procreation of her desire
the children are buried
in simple graves they had no occasion
to see one minute of the fait accompli
or hear a second of pulsation
in their fetal minds mutated genes aborted
by the nectar of technological gods
their adobe house glows
even on new moon midnight
with the cologne of destruction dancing
the jig on geiger counter dial needle
stuck on maximum register the bricks
homemade from corporate profit high tailings
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Poem by Janet Cannon
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Previously published in
Peace or Perish: A Crisis Anthology
and
Albuquerque Poetry Calendar
and
NUCLEAR IMPACT: Broken Atoms in Our Hands
|
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