Attack Attack

The imperfect products of the nation-state
lose their pitching arms, are torn, kicked loose
in fields of tan roil, the compasses dizzy

amid dreams and despairs
of exostellar clockwork. They have faces
and fall urgently. There. Bereft

of cinema. Salts bring them round
briefly: notions and bodies, magnets
for perforations: just think

of each alien real splitting the skin
into a terrible gasp, think how long it takes
surviving fragments to leach through

the bottom of a coffin, the close room
we wear to the twilight of not being
anymore present—One presumes

until weary and afraid. Sees
a wine bottle slip from stunned fingers.
Sees the sudden blitz of monsoon

coming down in the middle of sheer daylight,
volley after volley of wine bottles
shattering on the streets, on the cars,

beside the baby strollers, please, slicking
the marquees. Carpet. Shards. Prayer.
At the stoplight, between an open window

and the Wig-O-Rama on the corner
shakes a pick-up whose bed
is packed with outmoded wheelchairs

like collapsed accordions. Every available surface
grows an eye. And then it is as if
something red begins to speak.

Copyright © 2008 Marc McKee All rights reserved
from What Apocalypse?
New Michigan Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission