Downpour - “Nativity Scene in Bullet-Time”
Michael Symmons Roberts writes, “then should the world not call a moment’s halt,/not hang like a fly-cloud at head-height/when a downpour ends?” The downpour denotes bullets that are likely to extinguish the world by converting it into an insubstantial “fly-cloud.”
Fish - “Nativity Scene in Bullet-Time”
The author here envisions “A self-appointed prophet in a shirt and tiegapes, fish-like, caught halfway through a lie.” The fish-like look designates a scrupulous impression intended to camouflage the prophet’s duplicity.
Blurriness - “Mapping the Genome”
As the poet observes, “You move too fast to read it,/the order of the rocks, the cacti,/roadside weeds, a blur to you.” The blurriness embodies the inherent intricacy of gene mapping. The blurriness is ascribed to the intersecting Deoxyribonucleic Acids (DNAs) that must be coded individually to curtail misperceptions.
