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The Arrogance of American Triumphalism

Imagine this:
a city of the same stores on every
street corner and mass media
that no one quite believes
anymore, of unions, minorities,
and centrist liberals who have forgotten
their grassroots issues; a progression
of politicos, hardened by years
of prowling streets
colonized by pickpockets and prostitutes.

Imagine this:
the city’s slow-motion suicide,
blood sliding down streets
of gold bullion, draining into rain gutters,
drying in crevices by dusk.

And imagine this:
renowned
abstractions—liberty, justice, freedom, others—
ripped apart in a government high rise
by a van full of home-cooked
dynamite; the firefighters
pulling only arms and legs
from piles of debris.

In the end, see this:
not a real city so much as a theme.

A poem I "found" in a newspaper review of a photo-history of New York City. The review was written before September 11, but I read it after the fact. I took words and phrases from the article, arranged them, and connected them with my own words.