Fat Man’s replica,
the big death’s first egg,
is polished and buffed
like a Jemez pot, and white.
Ceiling white, though,
not the white of a Jemez pot, not
the white made from a special place
in the surrounding earth.
Little Boy is well named,
inflated younger brother,
olive as only the Army
could interpret olive,
the olive in Death’s martini,
a bullet with a square tail,
the arrow and the mace in one.
They lie quietly side by side
in Los Alamos, where such intense
activity produced their originals,
in the Science Museum.
Another display demonstrates
the reduction in size of the computers
used to produce the bombs
with ever greater yields.
The smaller the electronic brain,
the greater the capacity for destruction.
The big, early computers
could only destroy part of a city.
The motel has a year-round pool.
You get to it through the Spring blizzard
across the parking lot, after you’ve walked
halls air-conditioned outside every room.
Your key fits your motel-room door,
but does not unlock it. For your convenience,
there is one ice machine by the front door
in the lobby, where, since the machine is broken,
it will be convenient for the sadsack
deskclerk to explain that it is broken
and no ice is available.
They have ice up the street.
Every street sign is hidden
behind a pole, often one holding
another street sign.
The motel has a deli.
Slim Jims and Mars Bars.
The museum has two terra cotta statues,
General Groves and Oppenheimer, white
as textured ghosts, anatomically accurate,
and photographs of many tests, science
in action. Aniweetok. Mark I. A film
about Trinity. It’s an art film, santeros
interspersed with holocaust victims
and, of course, the heroic scientists
who said, “Yes, I will do this,
because if I don’t, someone else will.”
The film is called
The City That Never Was.
