Yay! An Ekphrastic Exercise

Well, I decided to write a poem off of the picture. It's a little rough, but I might clean it up and hand it out to workshop class next week. Sorry I haven't written any comments yet. I decided not to read anybody's stuff until I posted, as Jen suggested. So here you go, everybody!

A Thrilling Publication

There will be women with loosely fitting
clothes. Big hairdos. Men with guns. They
won't be afraid to use them. Radiation suits.
Things we'll never see in our humdrum
lives. The hero will perhaps be shot. But he
will live. The heroine could remove the bullet.
With the hero's direction. Or perhaps she
is a nurse. Somehow caught up in this terrible
plot. Or she's the one behind it all. Maybe
she gets shot at the very last second. In
the heart. To save the hero. She has a change
of heart. Suddenly, she believes in God
and country. The American way. We're
all capable of being forgiven at the last
second if we surrender ourselves to our guilt.
If we announce it. From the tallest rooftop.
We love to see the guilty embrace our ways.
Embrace their punishment. The serial killer
sobs in the televised murder trial. He begs
for the chair. And prays for the families.
The crooked politician cites lines from
Ecclesiastes. To our great comfort. The high
school date rapist dies a hero in Iraq. Parades.
In the book, a Soviet spy has stolen enough
Plutonium to blow the eastern seaboard
to kingdom come. In the end, it turns out
the radiation kills him before he can leave
the country. The G-Men find him dead
and disfigured. No face for mother or God
to recognize. No great speech excuses his
actions. The main detective goes home, alone,
to a frozen dinner. He cries to himself as he
watches the evening news. Somehow, there's
been a switch. When we put the book down,
our small room has become a little smaller.