Saturday Matinee at the Colony

during those matinees the kids would watch,
learn the latest slang from fighter
pilots gathering like starlings over Tokyo,
their word choice brittle, to the point,
so accurate.

check, check, they’d say, looking
at instruments swirling on the dials, planning
a speedy chase after those Zeroes shooting through
white clouds, firing those
machine guns,
forcing at least one plane to torque
away in flames, the pilot plunging
acrobatically round and round
till the audience cheered.

oh, yes, afterwards the walk home would be
lived out in pilot jargon,
kids running zigzag patterns down vacant streets,
each boy pretending to be brave and honest.
full of fury, hoping to shoot
down some invisible but quite lethal
enemy plane.