Featured Poem 6/27/03

Race and Riot Control

a rearranged found poem from harper's magazine

US Marines used it in Mogadishu.
They declared it there to be most effective
as green smoke, whereas Latins
are powder sprayed in crowds.  From
a concept envisioning sponge grenades,
tear gas is in comparison invisible, and
so cannot have a greater psychological
panic-producing super-adhesive effect.
The technology at first began to produce
greater psychological riots.  Negroids,
confronted with a stronger concentration,
saw it emerge at once from armed intruders,
and were able to self-impede its efforts
to "superglue" like insulation to their skin.
Said to have a greater adherence to
brilliance, and, therefore, to lose anonymity,
infrared dye was used so that rioters could
later extricate UN forces from that country.
It is extremely persistant and is virtually
pleasant in citrus odor.  Sticky foam
came to smoke, being marked, or stained, when
US Marines made a greater psychological panic-
producing effect than tear gas.  Somalians
declared it to be most effective in concentrating
the outsiders and removing them from their skin.

4.9.03
Madison, WI

© 2003 miriam hall

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