Between columns of stagelight that make a parthenon
fighter-planes spin wildly over youth in martial exercise
who drill in fields with borders marked by flagpole after flagpole--
there come montages of Spartakiad: proud faces steered
to flags before a pistol report: off on a relay.
All imagery fades or is grafted on to other illustrations.
Pilots unsnap helmets with looks estranged and satisfied
as they climb from their cockpits. They walk
under the flag and erect to aproned mom and junior.
A worker clutches the bar, moved to tears,
his attention shuffled between fighters and gymnasts.
But can we have a finale? It’s rude to keep us waiting.
With obligatory fire in hand a runner charges a platform
but no one has told us the further we enter this episode
the further we regress, this the consequence of flashback--
the fire of commencement roars as hands rise like wheat.
Anthemic pomp moves them to prayer, wet eyes, yeses.
The plane discharges twin ribbons of exhaust.
O rungless ladder! Model of molecular life! O DNA strand!
Then in sleight-of-hand the fighter returns as locusts,
not TV snow. Many bombard the faces and hands
and rearview mirrors in the Coliseum parking lot.
The crowd wants to leave
in good spirits, but wings find lips and are crisp
on the veteran as the tanned supermodel,
like grain boiled with a husk appendage attached
or baby fingernails on cartilage.
Waves of abundance pry mouths open, we swallow--
and America, we eat what we are.
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