Liz Williams

Los Alamos

make a pair of wings for his head
On top of which his hands fold in a clasp
He looks like Spencer Tracy now
For forty years then Harold Agnews' life tracked the atomic age
From Chicago to Los Alamos to Hiroshima to Los Alamos to Lascala (?)
If King Kong, eliciting an audience's sympathies by representing
a force taken out of nature and abused
The innocent atom wore a gorilla suit
King is less troubled by capsules in his land
Than by a rabid skunk in the area that might have threatened his children
And by a raccoon that commandeers the basketball backboard over the
garage and will not back off
Well anyway, we put the stuff together the next morning
And it looked as if the thing was going to go critical
Then Fermet says "Let's go have lunch."
So we started it all up again in the afternoon
And it went critical, and that was that
Some men no doubt, will, before sleep, consider one thought:
"I am alone."
But some, in the mercy of God or booze, do not
Long stare at the dark ceiling
Nixon's office is much hotter now
The air-conditioning is missed
Outside, an early fourth-of-July celebration
Has set off a brief volley of Chinese firecrackers
By nightfall, the East River will be ablaze with rockets
Those born in the atomic age will most likely die in the atomic age
If they do not die because of it
Those born in the atomic age will most likely die in the atomic age
If they do not die because of it
Those born in the atomic age will most likely die in the atomic age
If they do not die because of it
Those born in the atomic age will most likely die in the atomic age