What’s more American than a mass shooting

Poem for Fourth of July

Photo by Ray Hennessy on Unsplash

What’s more American than a mass shooting
on the Fourth of July
where the bottle rockets cry
like children running
through sprinklers made of blood?
My soda water tastes like a bomb pop,
and like that sweet cold confection
the can is painted red, white, and blue,
just in case I forget
where my tax dollars are spent.
The ghost of Oppenheimer
asks me to…