Nativity Scene in Bullet-Time Poem by Michael Symmons Roberts

If this is a fracture across time and place,
where past and future hold each other's gaze,

then should the world not call a moment's halt,
not hang like a fly-cloud at head-height

when a downpour ends? Should it not let
fireworks burst, then hold their sculpted light?

Then we will see the glory of this wild,
this liberated city, where everyone is held

in green, red, gold of roman-candle arcs
and rocket seed-heads. We walk

among the rescued in their newly crowded bars.
A couple caught mid-kiss across

their table, waiter balanced on one foot
with eyes of steel and arms of plates.

A self-appointed prophet in a shirt and tie
gapes, fish-like, caught halfway through a lie.

I could lean and wet my fingertip
in stilled champagne, tilted on a singer's lip.

You could grab a smoke ring from the ether
between punters and the pole dancer,

pocket it as proof, then we could take the air
beside the float-glass river,

where a busker rests her bow on a string,
and you ask what are all these flesh-ghosts thinking?

Far from a cheap trick, this city-wide hiatus,
the cost per minute is prohibitive.

We barely linger in this midnight space
before words rush back, before kiss meets kiss.