GREEN BLUE YELLOW ORANGE RED by Robert Viscusi

The whole country jittery as a squirrel

Had its televisions flickering all night.

This lasted for years and plenty of people

Still keep MSNBC or CNN bedside

Murmuring alerts, just in case

flood or bomb or tornado strikes

Or a mountain range collapses`

In clouds of dust on long chains of valley houses,

white, gray, orange, green, brown.

The young have left TV behind.

When the earthquake shook the college

The secretaries checking CNN found nothing.

Before the desks stopped swaying.

The students were already reading tweets

From Virginia Massachussetts Pennsylvania.

Blood America, now a shark, no longer sleeps.


Robert Viscusi