Reading the hot new Polish poet and thinking I should get in touch with my ethnic roots, I discover I feel no connection whatsoever

in the morning of the doilies
the mighty grandmother army
declares war on the past
casting even the “grand”
into the modernist ditch

the grandfather army
lies sleeping in said ditch
they say in their sleep
like the Delphic oracle of Cracow or Warsaw
if there were such oracles
“no matter grandma’s progress
we are bound by the conventions
of the ethnic universe
our destiny is to act out the narrative
of the drunken lout
just like you see in the movies”

this movie is still playing
except the movie house is empty

even the art house crowd
is only interested in superheroes

La Guerre des clans

take it slow now
the game show host tells the contestants
you’ve got two strikes
if you get this one wrong
the other family can steal your points

shot of the other family
huddling behind their counter
making x’s with their arms
like the Futurist students in
“Les Millwin”
Ezra Pound’s 1914 poem

except instead of the asymmetric clothes
of early bohemia
they wear the checkerboard fashion
of game show proletarians:
red dresses
and black suits with red shirts
and instead of heckling Diaghilev’s “decadent” Cleopatra
they celebrate a potential $20,000 prize

the contestant from the first family
guesses incorrectly
a huge red X in a box fills the screen
a loud buzzer sounds

the other family is overjoyed
but a woman in a black dress
also guesses wrongly

another giant red X fills the screen
another buzzer screams

the game finally goes to family #1
they dance euphorically
around a brand new red car
they enter it
wave their arms out its stationary windows
and scream

“Let us therefore mention the fact,
For it seems to us worthy of record.”*

*Ezra Pound, “Les Millwin”