“The Day After” Canticles

by Edward J. Carvalho

I. To Teach “The Day After”

Navy instructors taught the future
              to my Grandfather and his fellow crewmen;
each man told to forget
             what they knew about law and life,

                          should The Day After happen.

There’ll be no government
             or police—only a desperate throng.
The instructors lectured about a time
             when people would rise to shoot one another

                          over a slice of bread.

__________________________

II. The Day After: Centrifugal Haiku for the 1980s

Missiles in daylight
the flash of skeletons—haunt
of gray Jason Robards.

__________________________

III. “The session, called, ‘The Day After’”

Mostly found poem based on San Francisco Chronicle Article “Contingencies for Nuclear Terrorist Attack: Government working up plan to prevent chaos in wake of bombing of major city” May 11, 2007

A high-level group, quietly proposing
bomb shelters and suspension of civil liberties.

Hiroshima, they say, a glimpse; Katrina and 9/11,
glimpses.

One detonation will appear as a syndrome,
with more to follow.

Nuclear strike makes response unpredictable.

“‘The Day After’ Canticles” originally appeared in New Growth Arts Review 28 (Spring 2008): 38-39.