Gadget is the word. No one says bomb.
No one, then, says weapon. They think
detonation: the end in itself, and the beginning
in hindsight.
The tower, the core, the desert wind
in the best direction,
the thousand suns at its heavy core.
In the beginning, there is the word,
waiting to be uttered, waiting to be silenced.

 
 
 

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Anna Leahy is the author of the nonfiction book Tumor (Bloomsbury) and the poetry books Aperture (Shearsman) and Constituents of Matter (Kent State University Press). She directs the MFA in Creative Writing program at Chapman University, where she edits the international poetry journal TAB. See more at www.amleahy.com.