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      November 20, 2016Karthik PurushothamanBreaking News: Oscar Bait

      shakycam isn’t cinematic
      the fighter jet growls
       
      aren’t computer generated
      beneath the breathmasks
       
      the children aren’t pretending
      to heave nor did their father
       
      swallow a penny to simulate
      the right amount of retching
       
      the lights didn’t go out on cue
      the extras didn’t get paid
       
      to shriek in Arabic the women
      wearing hijabs aren’t masking
       
      American accents even though
      there is a reporter nobody
       
      is interested in interviews
      when the babies in incubators
       
      resemble rotini before
      the water comes to a boil
       
      two nurses share a moment
      they’d rather the babies died
       
      in their arms than in the air
      -strike on an open ground
       
      unceilinged babies in blankets
      are lined up one of them will
       
      grow up to enter the United
      States Muslim Registry live
       
      the exiled Jew’s life in
      the twenty forties, the twenty
       
      first century foxes would
      option this story summon
       
      someone from the hurt locker
      to direct this motion picture
       
      deemed fifty-seven percent
      fresh says the review
       
      aggregator shocking beautiful
      -ly shot and moving at times
       
      Aleppo like Baghdad
      like Tripoli like Kabul feels
       
      a tad too rehearsed to be real.

      Karthik Purushothaman

      “Wary as I am of its extended metaphor, I write this poem in reaction to a disturbing video posted yesterday morning by Al Jazeera, filmed during an airstrike taking place at a children’s hospital in Eastern Aleppo. Owing to Hollywood’s long-time lifelike depiction of loss of lives and trauma in conflict areas, I find myself immensely desensitized to the realities of such violence. Al Jazeera’s frontline video, however, wrenched me out of my numbness, and I shed tears for news on destruction for the first time in many years.”

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