The American Invite
The Sweet Box Suburbia
The first Immigrant Night
Mine, you say
The Dream is Mine

*
Loving the Mother Lode
Smiling away the fears, the tears
Cagney/Lacey; Ally/Anniston
Jennings/Brokow; Madden/Jordan

Then,
The Berlin Wall Dance
Dangerous Missions (I,II,III)
The Night Run on Baghdad
Level Six for a hacker (he died)
Visa for a Cyber-Buy

Finding,
A crowd outside the Taj Mahal
A Buddha on the ground
A Hologram in the White House

The Band-Aid Game
Air time to Ramallah
Grain truck to Eritrea
A CNN Crew in Calcutta (Teresa's Dead)
Battle Fatigue
Poverty Chic
Refugee Frame (XCU)
Cue Smoky Mountains (outside Kandhar)
Cue Burning Flames (Soweto, Sarajevo)
Target acquired
`Dont miss the shot'

*
Disassembling
Structures Crumbling
Cameras Swirling
Subways Clearing
Nations Holding
Breathing
Spending
Hurting
Real, Virtual, Collateral

Raising Men
Creating Nations
Following Lines
Straight as Rivers
Bounding/Bonding
Dividing/Creating
In the eyes of the maker
Containment

*
Hear now, America
The Hyphen-Drop
The Brown-Crescent
The Full Circle
The Oiling of the Glove

Forget,
The `Love of Kismet'
The Ummah of Old
The Coming of Jesus
The Karma of Hope

Anandam P. Kavoori is Associate Professor of Telecommunications and Broadcast News at the University of Georgia, Athens, Ga. The poem, "The Moment of Impact" draws on his understanding of television news in contemporary society and his experience as an immigrant. While inspired by the events of sept 11, it tries to contextualize that experience by framing it within a larger matrix of historical events and patterns of television consumption that preceded it.

Back to expressions