Patriotism
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- Patriotism
Biking home I count eleven flags hung out in front of Brazos Valley homes to welcome “shock and awe,” which flash inside on TV screens. Death, live from Iraq, has never looked more lovely. It has the grace mathematicians crave—from molten shock waves bursting walls, to God caught in the eternal, sigma-winged equations that guide each missile’s flight. And who can question the grave opening under whom no one should love—stomachs that growl, famished for power; souls able to live only in hells they build and rule. In all this brightness, who can see the mother nursing, the grandfather unrolling his prayer rug? Who can see the future warming its hands over the explosions? Who can see can see the future step across the seas and pull America’s face down to its perfumed, fire-filled breasts? [End Page 92]
Michael Collins is Associate Professor at Texas A&M University, College Station, where he teaches courses in creative writing and American literature. His work has appeared in a number of journals and anthologies, including Parnassus, Michigan Quarterly Review, Modern Philology, Poetry Canto, 2003 Best American Poetry, and Callaloo. His articles on Ishmael Reed and Etheridge Knight were recently published in PMLA. He received the Ph. D. in English from Columbia University.
