Four Poems – Sophia Holtz

 

What The Bomb Leaves Behind

The fireball created by Trinity’s explosion 
was so hot, it pulled in the surrounding sand 
and rained down a green glass they call 
trinitite. For years the army sold it 
to collectors. It was prized. A novelty. 

It is easiest to grasp the cloud—
The first and last breath of an explosion
barely comprehensible. 

Understand you’ve only seen its picture 
because it proves you come from someplace strong. 
Understand that half of what you’re told
is a show of force. 

Know there are places the living cannot go, 
new skins they wear when they risk— 
plastic suits, gas masks, iodine. 
There are craters and craters 
and islands uninhabitable. 
Particle-death that travels 
through us, leaving remnants in our bodies. 

Know what it has taken from us,
what we threw into it—
the smoke we see rising, towering 
over everything we have lost.