Picture Postcard from an Atom Bomb Test, Yucca Flats, 1953

How did you know. I was just thinking
of the irredeemable, pictured here,
as we might stand among them

behind a scrim of sunglass in the 50s,
and the dry wind in our faces has bits
of teeth in it, and it flies right through us,

our ghost flesh, as if we were not there.
Or were there and elsewhere, believing
and not, aka, believing, and none will

think of us, nothing to see, our hands
so white they give the light no place to fall.

Picture Postcard from a Map of the Inner Ear

I am writing from a hiss. You can see it blow
from an inner horn: The Angel of the Damage
I have done. Always a little snow. In truth,

the problem lies in the reptilian brain. Below
our dread-and-wish’s incarnation, a lamp
that burns too long against the waste of day.

But at the far end of mind, there is a speaker
in a room that spills over the lip like blood
from a cup. Have you seen The Tree of Life.

I love the scene when one dinosaur spares
another, her head tilted sideways. Like a question.

Picture Postcard from a Lost Pair of Glasses

The mirror, the patch, the telescope,
the gun, they lead a double-life. In one,
they pin their light to a slip of paper.

They sign the affidavit of the eye.
But in the other, they wander, welter,
confide in one another. I worry, I want,

they whisper over and over. If seeing is
believing, it must be, first, a little blind.
Did you know. Glass flows. Always

a bit of weeping in desire. No matter
how hard I stare, I am looking through a river.

Bruce Bond is the author of 37 books including, most recently, Patmos (Juniper Prize, UMass, 2021), Behemoth (New Criterion Prize, 2021), Liberation of Dissonance (Nicholas Schaffner Award, Schaffner, 2022), Choreomania (MadHat, 2023), Invention of the Wilderness (LSU, 2023), Therapon (with Dan Beachy-Quick, Tupelo, 2024), Vault (Richard Snyder Award, Ashland, 2024), Lunette (Wishing Jewel Editor’s Selection, Green Linden, 2024), and The Dove of the Morning News (Test Site Poetry Award, U of NV, 2024). Presently he teaches part-time as a Regents Emeritus Professor of English at the University of North Texas and performs jazz and classical guitar in the Dallas/Fort Worth area.