Ruminations on Picasso’s Guernica
How quick the damned
of Guernica
try to flee the asymmetry
of casualty
and the fire’s opened mouth
masticating at their jagged flesh,
how congruent the geometry
of one hundred thousand pounds of explosive ordinance
tessellating into them
like bread,
leavened with yeast and soured with corruption,
being thrown into a crowd
eighty years away:
arms outstretched, salivary glands
churning, waiting for what must enter the mouth—
how quick the mashed bread
snakes through an esophagus
into a deflated gut,
as fast as photons
travel from the floodlight
to the banner of the Ayatollah.