Only perverse sight,
the imitative laughter of the mad,
Nazi rock adopted
by DHS to recruit
ICE agents could
do justice to these scenes. Drones
are modernists:
detached, seeking form
in turmoil. Flash-bangs skip
before they pop, sparks extend
half a block, some teargas
is pink and lit from somewhere;
cars (which from this height
seem the true people)
lie at
odd angles
unless official, leaving.
(In paintings in which
Julio de Diego
imagined war in the Pacific, looming
jungle embraced
the muzzle-flashes and
red eyes of the soldiers;
here only night.) But after
a day of being arrested/
disappeared, few of the
Unlike or their supporters
appear amid the smoke
and sparks.
Some hulking shadows (it’s very cold)
leave the frame, only one is
being kicked;
are the ICEmen flash-banging
themselves? (“We’ll Have Our Home Again”
sang the Pine Tree Riots
with, in the ad, a B-2 somehow
saluting the White horseman.)
Drones can also carry missiles, be
bombs; which stretches without, perhaps,
destroying the analogy
to poets. Earlier the broadcast
showed two unmasked ICE agents,
their obesity
(put on perhaps since January 6)
pardoned by Kevlar, clips, automatics and big
white letters. I aestheticize, historicize;
oblique quotations flit through my mind.
“Now we are not a failure.”
