Luisa Muradyan

Records of the Failed Weapons of World War Two

 

I have trained these dogs to run

after tanks like children

chasing ice cream trucks.

This bitch ran faster than the others,

she knew how fear smelled in the damp

spring. I watched her paws on fire,

I wrote Dear God in the record books.

*

Or consider the World War

Two scientist playing with his toys

 in the bathtub, dreaming

of aircraft carriers made of ice

and sawdust. I dream

of airplanes sawed out of ice blocks,

melting like Iccarus

in the dandelion sun.

*

I imagine the god of wind tickled

at the sight of the wind cannon

shooting breath at unsuspecting pigeons

and weeping when he saw the invisible

man of air killed as a causality,

surrounded in a pool of oxygen,

oxygen everywhere.

*

This city is made of paper, fold enough

sheets to build a house, fly a paper airplane

to Osaka. This bat is strong enough to carry

her child in flight, here is a bomb. Here is a city

here is a fire, here is a mother burning her wings

here is a bomb where she once felt the weight

of wrinkled body. Here a baseball hold it in your

palm and watch the origami forest disappear

CP

Luisa Muradyan,  originally from the Ukraine, is an English instructor at Kansas State University. Her work has appeared in Ninth Letter, Anderbo, A-Minor, Neon and other fine places.