Bradley David Waters

arma-fuma

Your petite fuming year parallels entire peoples who

don’t know there’s a war. Two wars. Three wars, a

pestilence, & dominion. Oh, I fume too; and don’t know

people at all. Once one of him is over, helicopters nearly

nesting into boredom, he roils peace with their gilded rotors.

Dusty boring peace bearing unnerving green sprouts. Boop:

pulse it in a blender. Whoosh: now it’s mayonnaise. Whipped

ponds of frog eggs, fields of unzipped cattle, horses boiled

hoof-wither-to-child. Serve them—islands & tribes, hide-

bundled families on a good year’s ice, even the safe warm

A-mer-i-cans—something they didn’t know they were missing.

Produce & progress tilled by man-kind’s latest missile. Look up at

what we named them for you: Dark Eagle, Mako, Rocks, & Arrow.

Slices of heaven buttered with quicker kills. We’ll know them, the

bustling snoozy folk, sickly thin or sloth-plump, & greet their

converting pride (lust, wrath, envy, & greed). We’ll know them

daily, the heathens, scraping fries from stainless steel troughs on

base cantinas. Oh, I know you. You look like the one from yesterday…

How’s your family? Is today’s catch fresh? And laugh at how we’ve

almost learned their hellos. I know a woman who reaches for

them behind drive-thru-cell windows. A man tethered by

sandwich bag ties to washed-up ducks. And the one about the

housewife tethered to her county, fraught with anx-i-ety. We know

her name, her other name, shoe brand, bra size, karaoke song, &

makeup line. We know her beef, her beef, her beef, her beef.

Her hello & goodbye. We practice it & we got it down. We got

her down. We switch her off and still we got her down.

Where was I now? How easy we forget where our brush left off

on the big picture. The big tube. The big whoosh & boop.

So much sense the way we start, devour, die for and forget.

Watch last season’s finale to recall the bad, the bad, the beef, &

the beef. The green pop of the champagne night drone. The

ballroom in the situation room. Watch party for a new desert

theater. Where hinges & troughs remember their ore. Bags &

bras remember their bog. And missiles hatched by papa on the

dancefloor bop & whoosh & return to the nest. Life booms back

full circle and we love its symmetry. Star-links & laser guides.

I don’t know many, but I remember you: spring green & bored,

unmanaged forest lazy with abundance & letting it fall about you.

You can’t hear it, but when a tree falls it sounds like a bomb, fumes

for a year, & rises as a tinted armoire. Good. You’ll be eligible for

fully-funded services then. Take up a small job; few hours a greeter.

Apron stuffed with foreign hellos, perfume samples, & a marker

that scans hundred-dollar bills for domestic terrorists: Hello, may I see

your receipt? Seed again today? Didn’t I see you yesterday? How’s your family?

Oh, I don’t know how you do it with all those people, but this morning

goldfinches arrived at the feeder. Must have been a brilliant million. And

like last season, like hungry sitting ducks, it was so easy to lock aim &

blast them out of sight. All it takes is one Dark Eagle. I arrive every

day to stretch my legs & buy supplies. Now that’s how you say Hello.

Now that’s how you say Goodbye.