Nano

In an air-conditioned trailer, three geeks

barely beyond boyhood fist-bump and high-five

at a job well done. With the click of a key a dozen

soundless screens flutter. Now in the shallow

of a cave near the Khyber Pass, a stack of glow sticks

activated in the blast steeps the darkness green:

two cans of pineapple; a mangled can of beets

bleeding juice; some boy streaked black, his burns

wrapped in torn canvas tent ­flaps. He must hear the

cyborg beetle’s brains buzz like a circuit-­bent keyboard

above his Pashto prayers. But we know enough to

leave the live feed low, audio is for the analysts.

Our weapon : witnessing — : wired that way.

Somewhere in Texas or California or Kentucky

Taco Bell is on the table where too the kill list rests

quietly satisfied, and so its discord folds inward

like an origami acorn nestled sharply in the heart.