William Doreski

Drone Attack


In Saudi Arabia, a flock of drones descends on a refinery. After a stutter of explosions, flames glut on the world’s fuel supply, threatening a third world war. From sixty-four hundred miles away, I can smell the roasting desert air. What of the pilgrims always creeping toward Mecca? Can they cleanse that oil-stink from their lungs before they enter the holy city? How much deformation can a sacred text sustain? The crumpled blazing tanks look like eggs crushed in the carton. Pipes rumple like spaghetti. When I was a young firefighter, I learned how to contain oil fires with blasts of low-expansion foam spread over molten surfaces. Probably the Saudis have refined the technique. But the black smoke lingers. I can see it flirting overhead, far overhead, a smudge of guilt on everyone’s conscience. A few birds tall in the early autumn flicker through the mist without soiling themselves. Someday I should reform myself and embrace one or more of the sacred texts, make a pilgrimage to some obscure city that has forgotten the names of its gods.

Beginning with a Certain Phrase

 Whether hemlock or nectar doesn’t matter in your larger vision. You drink from the same golden cup as the most notorious of the gods. You slop a little on me and it burns the tattoos right off my thighs. What are you thinking? You aren’t thinking what you’re drinking but something seen at the end of a reversed telescope. Is that someone you know, naked on a splintery pier in the Hudson River? That was long ago, when the city groaned with crime and no one collected the trash. Now the big money has arrived to save us from ourselves. Save us by rendering us more homeless than the ghosts who prowl the parks at night, remembering their favorite rapes. You want to deflate these ghosts forever, dooming them to that cold dark edge of the galaxy where everyone dares everyone else to jump. You often dare me to jump, but there’s no gravity in that lack of dimension. I wouldn’t fall but just hover like a speech balloon. The burned spots on my thighs hurt. You’re glad my tattoos are gone, but I miss their sporty cartoonish figures, their winsome blues and reds, and the story they left unfinished.

Private and Public

The nineteenth century returns in a gasp for steam and trill of courtship. Passenger pigeons blacken the sky. Pleasure maximizes in a stutter of corsets and stays. Horsehair sofas groan with well-requited sex. Have you ever seen such public affection before? Pink and beige, brown and cream bodies flicker in sunlit rivers where everyone is private and public at once. Do I mean public privates? No, your humor is misplaced. No one laughed in the nineteenth century unless they meant it. You don’t mean it. You would never wear a corset. You would never frock yourself in clouds of drapery. Think of Emily Dickinson gardening in the deepest dark, long after the family has gone to bed. Think of Thoreau’s moonlit walks, manure squelching under his boots. Where did all those steam engines go? Scrap metal recast in the form of human figures that now dominate. No wonder we feel so tough. No wonder we rust so easily. No wonder no one needs corsets or stays.