L e t t e r   t o   L a y l a    a l - A t t a r


                    who
among us can imagine ourselves
unimagined?
                    Lucille Clifton


Layla,
your daughter bombed
blind, you, dead.
Pilots, fouled by speed,
troll your crescent.

Bound by
bafflement, happy-
go-lucky, we are criminal,
thieving fortunes like
desktop playthings.

My national identity
speaks for me, across
natio nal boundaries,
to the dead
end of this imperialist
fiasco.



z o e t r o p e

                    for Neal Sand

                    quickly
quickly undone
like egos like hairdos
like shantytowns

because it isn’t like a scientific look at the sky
nor an accurate diagram of the human eye

but maybe it’s like the flickers
that yielded the first motion pictures

a photograph bleached in thirds
sunlight spectra     aftereffects      low luminance

a mirror turned on the sun turn on

a sustained and transient
populace

                    to turn a life
astigmatically

quickly undone
we call
come back come back
we’re older than the movies