Terrible Liberty
Kress, Leonard
Leonard Kress Terrible Liberty Though not a scene like Goya's Third of May, Goya may have seen something like this and executed it: These men and women lined up against the bricks, wire-brushed...
...They stand protected on the corner, from cars and crowds, only the hours make them hunker down with no Napoleonic Wars or sorrows in sight...
...The whole rest of the day they stand transfixed, unfiltered cigarettes firing in arms like pistons on a single straight-six camshaft in constant purring idle...
...This scene from my bedroom bivouac clear as through crosshairs in a rifle scope...
...Their secret maws roil like unfixed strays or unborns churning up their mothers' bellies...
...Like the one I passed by earlier, barely a block away, dressed in the shooter shop's plate-glass display: propped on unexploded shells, amid more souvenirs from Vietnam...
...Leonard Kress Terrible Liberty Though not a scene like Goya's Third of May, Goya may have seen something like this and executed it: These men and women lined up against the bricks, wire-brushed and acid rubbed and pointed, after their daily fix of methadone...
Vol. 124 • May 1997 • No. 10
