[Skip Navigation]

Poetry Archives

A continuing selection of classic and contemporary poems.

Fission

S. K. Kelen

White glow melts life
freezes shadow, twisted bottle
the birth of the transistor
and then.
Of doom wide open
flash bang flash bang
dead ballet in radium
stuck to the walls
that disintegrate at the speed of light.
Hiroshima is mother and push-button
skeletons do the rattle dance.
Together, we are the industry of poison light.
Hiroshima, apotheosis of weapon & machine,
your centenary will shine a sly beacon
in a forest museum where the extinct
are preserved and money spurts.
TV spawns a billion little Hitlers:
Radiation Plus, this Island Earth.
A petrified breeze from the virtual trees
whispers Hiroshima.
© S. K. Kelen. All rights reserved.
From Trans-Sumatran Highway & Other Poems | Polonius, 1995
Reprinted by permission of the author.
Add Keyword Tags

Separate each tag with a space. You may add as many tags as you'd like to each poem.

What are tags?
Tags, sometimes called “folksonomies,” are words that describe or categorize a poem, like “20th century modernism” or “Italian sonnet”. Tags can help you find poems that have something in common, based on how other people classify them.

More Info

This site will work and look better in a browser that supports web standards, but it is accessible to any Internet device.