Overland literary journal

There’s a bomb on this train of thought

Loaded with raw materials: colons, commas,
fragments of broken grammar. This poem
is wired with faulty rhetoric and ideas
strapped to the author’s chest.
Sensitive to sudden movement,
it won’t reach the final station
and its metaphors won’t survive
the ride to their logical conclusions.
It is not afraid to shout
in MAXIMAL CAPS
or exclaim emotions are explosive!
But it stays silent, containing
its secret until the end.
It believes poetry is full of risk
and targets innocent readers.
It spurns the ease of paraphrase
and the violence of bullet points.
But it can’t afford the precision
of laser guided imagery. All it has
is the shrapnel of language,
the lingua franca of blood
connecting the heart and brain.
This poem is a dirty bomb.
It is designed to detonate
when your eyes reach the final word.

Cameron Fuller is based in Adelaide but has lived in Brisbane, Sydney, Cairns and Canberra. He is a PhD student at the University of South Australia and a poetry co-editor of Wet Ink magazine.
© Cameron Fuller
Overland 199-winter 2010, p. 95

Like this piece? Subscribe!