ATOMIC COCKTAIL

by Alan Catlin


During the 50’s atomic testing
in the Nevada desert worried
business leaders who felt they
might negatively impact gambling
interests, tourist trade:

all those folks might stay away
who were meant to be sitting by new
in-ground pools with binoculars,
watching the mushroom clouds
spread across the sky, up into
the jet stream, out across the country,
while other visitors lay in the sun
with their reflectors soaking up the rays,
sipping their especially-created-for-
the-occasion, Atomic Cocktails.

In the modern age,
a new Atomic Cocktail is invented
without alcohol or fruit juice by
substituting radioactive fallout
in water for the fancier concoctions,
allow it into the reservoirs and the food chain
making it unsuitable for children and,
most likely, adults to consume, then
evacuate a fifty mile radius area around
melting down reactors for minimal impact;
no need for binoculars or sun screen now,
we’re way beyond that now.


Alan Catlin has published numerous chapbooks and full length books of poetry and prose. Pygmy Forest Press is publishing the collected "Deep Water Horizon" poems.
_____________________________________________________