Driving through the Country before You Are Born: Poems

Exit Wound

63 Exit Wound I.Trenches You stare into the open space split by wire. Small plumes of smoke rise and you realize for the first time that you did not know. You never dreamed it would be like this. Small plumes of smoke rise and you realize there is the chance that you won’t make it through. You never dreamed it would be like this. Grass withers. Mud dries. Dust chokes. There is the chance that you won’t make it through as the fire consumes and encircles the hillside. Grass withers, mud dries, dust chokes and somewhere beyond it all, a mother is crying while a fire consumes and encircles the hillside. The explosions come, and you look for her, somewhere beyond the hill, find your mother crying, and you realize once again that you did not know. 64 The explosions come, and you look for her. You stare into the open spaces, split by wire. 65 II.Downtime It’s been seven days now and no shots have been fired from either side; still you march forward as if you are advancing to new ground. But you have been here before, single file, twelve, fifteen, sometimes eighteen hours a day, until you drop in the hole you dug the night before.To pass the time, guys in front have mail to trade. It’s an eye for a tooth with them, no trade backs.That’s OK if you have family that will write often, Dear Johns are worth something on Mondays.And you can have friends, but in the end they mean nothing, 66 go too quickly, leave you behind to feel guilty about resting where there is no more grass, no more blue sky, and the rain still comes harder and faster, cutting trenches through the mud. It’s the down time that makes you think, drapes heavy across your shoulders, holds your head down. 67 III.Liberation Having eaten the figs, rotten and sweet, you light a cigarette and look at the holes blown into the moon. You shut your eyes and search for Baltimore, find her washing dishes, figs drying on the windowsill, a yellowed letter. Mortar fire breaks the night, exposes open graves and uncertainty, until the sun rising in protest punishes you for looking. By noon you reach the town they shelled the night before, liberate the dead, and kill the living, try to ignore familiar faces. But they all look the same, the landscapes: re-digested, thrown up, a fish bone, rot. Your eyes swell, you gag on dust and figs. The letter tucked away neatly in your front shirt: a reminder, a carcass, a home a long way away. 68 IV.Whiplash They told you most pilots get it diving for fire: the twinge, the slight jerk, and suddenly you are falling straight down. The snap comes too fast to recognize. Like the moment when you awaken abruptly from a daydream, your neck sore, time and space distant and incoherent. They told you that when you eject, your body can be torn apart. You wonder what it would feel like finding only half a man entangled in wreckage, eyes looking at God disappointed. Maybe it is just the way they want you to see it. Behind walls, through windows, under sheets, there is no heaven. 69 V.Fallen Today you ripped the hatch open, peeled the cover back, got to know the insides better. You used to deny the relationship, say it wasn’t you that made this, deny your responsibility. But this time you wiped the black away, stirred things up; watched them turn red again, deep red, flowering and drawing itself inside out. You dipped into the insides, brought a little of it out into the light, and held it in your hand a while, smeared it across the wall behind you. You try to ignore the splinters in your back, tiny holes scattered throughout like lights from some small town in eastern Pennsylvania where it would be easy to close your eyes, where your mom hangs clothes out to dry in the midnight air—like a sign perhaps, a letter from home, a sign that reads—Bury me there. 70 VI.Armistice This war will not end by the objections...