FOOTAGE

by Kai Jensen

The bridge falls so quickly.
The ship seems stationary
like a fat little house
alight behind the dark lattice
tiled with coloured rectangles
or a plump insistent animal
nudging a leg for food.
On air, laconic voices
discuss the situation.
It seems there’s a crew up there.
The pilots wring their hands—
their bad dream’s turned real.
Nothing seems to change
but the bridge falls
all at once, its cobweb drooping
then brushed away.
The men dozing in their cabs
awake to death. A city stalls.

Kai Jensen’s father was born in Baltimore, the site of the recent bridge disaster, while Kai was born in Philadelphia. As a child he emigrated to New Zealand with his family, and is now an Australian. Kai works from home as an editor at Wallaga Lake on the Far South Coast of New South Wales. His poems have appeared in most leading Australasian literary journals and, in the United States, have been published in or accepted by The Inquisitive Eater, Men Matters Online, The NewVerseNews, Rattle and The Fictional Cafe.

BOMBS BURSTING IN AIR

by Jean L. Kreiling






You gasp and smile at bright chrysanthemums
that bloom for just a moment in the sky,
and hardly give a thought to what becomes
of them, the black ash falling as they die.
But sometimes, buffeted by mighty booms
that follow flares of patriotic pride,
you think of patriots who met their dooms
amid such noise—red-white-and-blue’s dark side.
Why do we want to watch bombs burst in air?
Did Mr. Key imagine that we would?
That we’d perpetuate the din and glare
of combat?  Maybe we’ve misunderstood.
His anthem hailed a hard-won victory;
we’ve prettified the fires of tragedy.


Jean L. Kreiling is the author of the recently published collection, The Truth in Dissonance (Kelsay Books, 2014). Her work has appeared widely in print and online journals, including American Arts Quarterly, Angle, The Evansville Review, Measure, and Mezzo Cammin, and in several anthologies.  Kreiling is a past winner of the String Poet Prize and the Able Muse Write Prize, and she has been a finalist for the Frost Farm Prize, the Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award, and the Richard Wilbur Poetry Award.