If ears ring from a name struck by tongues flicked against teeth
in the way a firing pin touches off a round, sending it spinning
from a barrel’s mouth and into the pith of its target, let us
hear. Let us turn to explosions on television screens, their glow
the concussive rush that brands us as survivors. Insallah. God
willing. We are in the fast burn, the nuance of a suicide bomber’s
final prayer. Let the news ticker catalogue a marketplace rising
cool with the shouts of boys selling dates, of men gathered
to smoke tobacco, until heat radiates from a center-blast,
expands from its source, names us among the living.
51 The Paris-American
Michael Loruss is a native Californian, a veteran of the United States Army, and an alumnus of Berea College, where he studied English literature. Currently, he is an MFA candidate in creative writing at Hollins University, and serves as assistant editor for The Hollins Critic. He is a coordinator for One Night Standing—a community reading series in Roanoke, Virginia—and is founding editor of DIALOGIST (a forthcoming quarterly journal of poetry and art), as well as assistant poetry editor for Impeachable literary journal. His work has recently been featured in Guernica, and is forthcoming in PANK, No. 8.
