Carol Burnett tugs an ear, waves toodly-doo to the camera eye.
It’s ten o’clock, and a white mechanized man asked if I, a child,
know where my children are. No, but it’s time for the news, time
for the insisting war, and the preposterous Philco—half monster
TV screen, half bulky, functional phonograph—blares jungle, its
flat glass face filled with streaked pans of crushed foliage, the whir
of blades, dust-dreary GIS heaving through quick-slamming throats.
Lurching toward the ledges of copters, they screech commands,
instructions, prayers, struggle to cram blooded lumps back into
their uniforms—dead there, there, let’s see, almost dead over there—
a hand dangling by tendrils, a left eye imploded, black-and-white
red etches slow roadways into the back of a dimming hand. Beneath
the lack of hue, a white buzz, a lazy scroll of dates and numbers:
This is how many gone today, how many last week, last month,
this year. Big Daddy Cronkite’s eyes glaze, consider closing, refocus.
Think of all the children plopped in front of this unscripted boom
to pass the time. Think of Tom turning Jerry’s head into spectacular
dust, then this, our first official war smashing into the family room,
blurring into cinema, into lesson. It’s how we learned to subtract.