In his image, my master made me—Incendiary—Burning
day after day—Only light by which the world could see—
Portmanteau of co-precipitated aluminum salts—Naphthenic acid—
Palmitic acid—Everything I touched igniting—
Gone—Shortage of rubber—Losing war—Enemies
camouflaged in plain sight—My master hewed me
from phosphorus and gasoline—Flew me miles from Massachusetts—
His Harvard laboratory—388,000 tons of me—Cast
like a seine—Foxholes, forests, trenches, bunkers, rivers—
Nothing was safe—Deoxidizing—Asphyxiation, radiation,
hyperthermia, unconsciousness, death—1,200 degrees Celsius—
2,500 square yards—Sticking to human skin—
Licking skin from bone like a lollipop—Pop—8 June 1972—
I didn’t see the little bird until I smashed her—Her scream
heard around the world—Nóng quá, nóng quá—I did what
my master designed me to do—Her clothes seared off—
Her cousins crucified by shrapnel—Village gone—
What my master called “an accident” wasn’t—It was
part of the plan—Containment policy—What he mistook
for “Charlies” were kids kneeling in a temple—Their palms
pressed together in prayer—Nobody stopped to save them—
I couldn’t—In his image, my master made me
to burn—Day after day—Failure of thought—Merciless
machine—Senseless—I had no heart—My master gave me
no conscious, no voice—Not even the photographer paused—
Not even the photographer, blood of her blood, opened
his canister of water to pour what was left on her face—Skin sliding off
her face—Her face in the only light—Stop—
Like my master, he clicked and clicked until he won the Pulitzer Prize—
His eye behind the camera’s eye—Shooting—His shot
heard around the world—The front page of The New York Times—
A fixture—Audio tape of Richard Nixon holding the Times—
I’m wondering if that was fixed—Audio tape of Nick Ut—The horror
of the Vietnam War recorded by me did not have to be fixed—
I will never forget—Forget? I could never—Foxholes, forests, trenches,
bunkers, rivers: I’m snared in them now—Inseparable—
Seine trapping the dead like market fish—Their red eyes looking at me—