"The kids are all right,"
she writes, in the demotic
from golden hinterlands.
"We feared the future,
as it ends the now. Schlepping
around Hong Kong
"In that shit-smelling dhow,
or whatever they're called,
did you not see daughters
"walking the jetty with tired
fathers in the lead? Please
spare me your unsparing
"Teutonic misanthropy. Even here,
in Baghdad by the Bay,
a coding drudge, son
"of exurbs, fences,
and the-goddamned-NRA-make-
good-neighbors -- even he
"could lift by hand out of the gutter
some skeevy junky. Mothers
of whim, not necessity, upended her there.
"Her abjectness, her sores, weren't
catching. 'Holocaust,' you sneer,
'the cleansing fire aches
"'to break free over our
dollhouses and mounds of cocaine.'
I tell you I've spoken to the sane:
"to such silent children whose eyes
were unforgiving as razor blades.
Should your vaunted flames
"perservere, they leave behind
ashes and fat, water and lye.
Indeed, ridicule may alone thereby die."
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