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THE WRITERS POST (ISSN: 1527-5467) VOLUME 11 NUMBER 1 JAN 2009 |
SIMON
PETER EGGERTSEN _____________________________________ ARC FLASHES We went into
villages after they
dropped napalm and the human beings were fused together like pieces of metal that had been soldered. Dominic
Bazzotto, 1972 False
Vietnam report The arc light flashes, strikes in the dark, a cobra spitting and blinding. Heat lightening in silence, ricocheting off the horizon, like on summer nights in the valleys of Utah. But this is a darkened street in Hanoi. The metal snaps in response to the hit, fusing hard to itself. The white buzz repeats. The iron sings on its way to becoming an entrance-way gate. The white-hot weld, pulsing molten for a second, makes sure the fit. The twisting reptile cord coils and dances, then stiffens and jumps as the charge rushes through the line seeking cold steel. It wants it hot, if only for a moment, to freeze the metal to metal. Through the night, as I lie in the bed, the flashed light, strobes the room, bounces off the wall. The storm of work rages outside the quiet walls. In the morning the metal lies cold and dead, stiffened on the walk, stung over and over by the hot viper. What were strips the night before now together will become a guarding door, protecting others from life's arcing strikes. But first a red priming for its life to hide the night’s hideous wounds. ‰ The Writers Post &
literature-in-translation, founded 1999,
based in the US. Copyright © Simon Peter Eggertsen & The Writers Post 2009. Nothing in this magazine may be downloaded, distributed, or reproduced without the permission of the author/ translator/ artist/ The Writers Post/ and Wordbridge magazine. Creating links to place The Writers Post or any of its pages within other framesets or in other documents is copyright violation, and is not permitted. |
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