Sarah Jacoby, Hiroshima (watercolor, digital)
A hundred-fifty through the paddied fields.
It’s not the speed that unnerves me,
it’s this feeling I get when I look through
tempered glass. Fishermen hunched on buckets.
Forests of trees with their skins peeled back.
It’s hard to believe we’ve tweaked the physics,
pared friction from sleek machines—
like this porpoise-nosed engine hushing the rush.
Even my seat on the aisle seems pleased
with its shape. It’s my privilege, I guess,
to relax, if I can shake the calm memorial:
children in the galleries, on the walls
pictures framing the smoke and wrack.
Chains of paper swans. Melted cameras.
A kimono’s pattern burned into a woman’s back.
Forthcoming in The Americans by David Roderick, © 2014. Reprinted with the permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press.