From across the boulevard, crowds stream
toward the entrance to the battleship whose nine
16-inch guns, three triple-gun turrets, twenty
5-inch dual purpose guns and forty-nine 8-inch
Oerlikon auto cannons are decked out in over two
million lights. To get to the main deck, the lines
(single file) must navigate two bridges, but only
after walking through the museum converted into
a white wilderness. In one hall, an animated
tree. In another, strung on wires from
the ceiling, a polar bear treads air. It could be
drowning in an actual sea, while the rest of us,
faces craned upwards, could be flailing in
shipwreck. Somewhere, a white queen dispenses
her white benedictions. If light is the purpose
here, there's a surplus of the kind that thistles
from one wire to another in a grid cast over
ten thousand square feet of teak deck. Deployed
to the Pacific during World War II, the ship
shelled targets during the second Philippine
campaign and the Battles of Iwo Jiwa and Okinawa.
It fired its final shots at the end of Desert
Storm. White-hot flash along the horizon. Smoke
and orange flames. Smell of burnt metal and cordite.
