| Bronzing of the Boots by Martin Ott | ||
When they blew up the dictator’s statue, marble sword and stallion raining on the streets, I winced, even as soldiers spat on the rubble for cameras, for the mighty fallen. Atlas was all our fathers, right? You know him. He’d rather break than drop a hint. And break he did, his statue crumbling on some distant, inconsolable shore. In war, the world rolls behind us, unbearable, on our heels. It is a child’s marble, a random boulder. Some nights, we can barely see it beneath us, hidden like testicles, sure to disappear. Some mornings we watch an irresistible ball of blue that could either be ocean or sky or God’s own eyes. In Baghdad, soldiers have left their boots behind, littering the street in growing mounds, taking shapes like shadows of the men who threw them for family and fear. This is a monument fit to revere. (4-04-03)
Martin Ott is a freelance writer living in Los
Angeles and a graduate of the Master of Professional Writing Program at USC. He has
published fiction and poetry widely, including upcoming issues of Beyond Baroque Review,
Hayden's Ferry Review, Hotel Amerika, Mudfish, Poetry East and Third Coast. His ms. Magician's
Heaven is currently a finalist for the 2003 inaugural Agha Shahid Ali Prize in Poetry.
Bronzing of the Boots is part of a ms he's completing Gulf. Click here to read more poems by Martin Ott.
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