Exxon+by+Robert+Wrigley



[|Exxon: A Poem by Robert Wrigley]
Behold the amazing artificial arm, a machine eerily similar to the arm it replaced, machined to exacting //tolerances//, as its engineers say, to “the limits of allowable error.” Think of the hand in the glove, the piston in the cylinder, the cartridge in the chamber of an arm: a weapon, that is, a firearm, to say it more primitively, more exactingly, more ceremonially, and with more appropriate awe. Behold then the arm from which fire comes, the hand of a god hurling lightning. Behold the digital trigger, tick of the finger on the hand separated from its body by the bomb at the police station, the rifle smoking just beyond it, as though it might yet shoot again, the digital tick of the bomb’s timer also disembodied now. Study the artificial arm, its array of hex- head setscrews, its titanium armatures and axes, its silicone skins from light pink to dark brown. Here is this, from the company’s catalogue: “The upper and lower forearm tubes are secured to a four-position, manually locked elbow mechanism,” and this, from God himself, having slain the man’s family and saying to Job, //Or hast thou an arm like God//? And, //Wilt thou also disannul my judgment//? //Wilt thou condemn me, that thou mayest be righteous//? The nerve, and the lack. Beyond the limits of allowable error, beyond the art of it, the story of Job, the trajectory of narrative, the flight of the bearings and nails, the improvised explosive device; beyond war itself, that honored aesthetic ever-present evil alive and vile in the story that is a lie about the truth and the truth, great engineer help us, of the lie. Consider the ongoing problem of tactile sensitivity, the elusiveness of feeling, those of us otherwise untouched touched for many dollars a gallon. And see the soldier in parade dress easing with his other, non-silicone fingers a credit card into and removing it rapidly from the slot in the pump, and entering through its portal the world of disembodied money and the exacting tolerances of the world banking system: behold this soldier, and know of his doubts about the surrendering of arms, which is to say not only the ambiguous tolerances of the Second Amendment but the limb abandoned in Baghdad; the soldier who has entered also into the system of government surveillance—the porn sites, the blogs, the maimed-in-the-line-of-duty collectorates, the whiskeys and women, the rehabilitations. See the soldier who nods and whose left intact hand extended to your extended right one confuses you an instant, but who nods again to relieve you in your awkwardness. And behold them, your untouched touched hands, as he nestles his man-made right one over both of yours on his left, feeling, between his old self and his new, a responsible citizen. www.newyorker.com