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The Legal Studies Forum
Volume 30, Number 1/2 (2006) reprinted by permission Legal Studies Forum Lawyers & Poets A World Ever So Mad JONI WALLACE ______________________________ Reel to reel It could be this or any city. A man emerges from a taxi in a sharkskin jacket, snow breaking against the blue green sheen of his shoulders. It's a minor scene, almost missed as the shadow from an airplane overhead bleeds the image into blankness, my exquisite wound. You would ask how I am. Mostly I am saved by greed and desire. Greed for the season's voltage in fur, desire for the wax shine of red stiletto heels, movie prize of some long ago actress, not me, and she shall witness our breaths fly out, never missed, impossibly measured, this pox on the living, like ghosts. [483]
Tilt (July 16, 1945, 5:28 a.m.) In a photograph snapped just before, their eyes, different in color, show the nervousness of a herd entered the clearing, one catching the unfamiliar scent meaning some will be sacrificed, some will be saved. But today is their 15 minutes: the staged smash of the most infinitesimal piece of U 235, a chain reaction that shines from here to heaven, drops its veil on every cactus lizard rabbit coyote within a 250 mile wake. Still, it's only a makeshift for other crimes. Those trickle out the canopy of malignant dust like a virus, in three weeks time a city incinerated, then two cities. The sky winks and the general turns to the scientist and says bingo. This is the part where the credits roll. Please remove your protective glasses and place them in the seat back in front of you. Please exit through the signs marked EXIT. [484]
Fifth Lucky Dragon There was a dazzling light, and the sea became brighter than day. — Yoshio Misaki Filament of memory: smooth azure of sea, nets filled with starry bodies and more stars above as he sinks further into a dream of a woman below uncontained skies, a certain turbulence in the air around her and then her voice so real it startles him awake to slap of saltwater, salt mist, work to be done. He has no name for what flowers westward, a sea turned light box for the terrible boat, dawn scratched out of the sky. In the blue/gray light he moves to contend with the harvest, heavy and luminous, and it is not yet that one-millionth of a second called critical mass, and the ashen snow has not yet fallen on the eyelashes and faces of the men who will rejoice like children numbered for their graves. [485]
Bohr's Dream In the beginning there is an idea as if a dead thing stepped out of a man. Lawyers prepare their witnesses and briefs. Invitations issue. The judge arrives with his gavel and his furs. God, a hangman on the piazza, sends his archangel. In the great white courtroom lunch is served, a feast of pheasants and pearls. Applause, flourish of trumpets. O nearness of night. Windless starless night. [486]
Joni Wallace grew up in Moab, Utah, and Los Alamos, New Mexico. She graduated from the University of New Mexico School of Law in 1990 and clerked for United States District Judge Richard Matsch in Denver, Colorado. Wallace received an MFA in poetry from the University of Montana in 1998 and was awarded a Creative Writing Fellowship by the Arizona Commission on the Arts in 1999. She has twice been a resident at the Vermont Studio Center and her work has been published in numerous journals. Her first chapbook, Redshift, was published by Kore Press in 2001. She currently teaches writing workshops through the University of Arizona Poetry Center and in the state's correctional facilities. "Reel-to-reel" was previously published in Forklift, Ohio: A Journal of Poetry, Cooking, & Light Industrial Safety. |
