Poem: For Chelsea Manning

David Eberhardt

– Poet’s Website –

After movie “Coherence”

The box contains:Schrodinger’s cat, an oven mitt,
A stapler, ping pong paddle, and

Beneath the sub basement is another level
To which few have access- there shelves of bottles
With body parts, yellow liquid,
And inmates deemed “special”; one keeps
Reciting Sappho where she’s
Rejcted by Phaon and throws herslf into
The sea, dragging her lyre; another
Obsesses re “drugs in my food”…
It’s called acit, ends in “ine”, before
You go in you must watch film of
An Iraqi crawling toroise like, trying
To lift himself having been shot
By amurikan pilots, then the ambulance
To take him is “lit up” by the fly boys…

The Sapphic sea cobalt and samite,
And that dark blue on the ridged box
In a cube with gold inlay- you must turn it;
The box will open, star like, obscene flower
With arrow point sections:
How time zones are parallel , the physics of levels.
The presence of evil you can’t see beside you.