Trajectories of War

Trajectories Of War

Two Soldiers

Jeremiah Bennett
Killed near Atlanta, 1864

We worked at McFall's Variety
in Bells, Texas, swept and oiled floors,
sold candy, and shot rats
that gnawed burlap bags of peanuts.

June '61, his Company
elected him Lieutenant, while I
checked stock. Everyone said,
"Enlist or get drafted."

When he was furloughed
at Christmas, we hung stars
and pine boughs, watching the girls
gaze at enchanted isles.

Now his head floats smiling,
last words hooking, "I guess
you'll be coming with us." Scared,
I said, yes. No one is awake.

Randall Pinnel
Killed at Franklin, Tennessee, 1864

We nicknamed him Bullet.
He loved his Mississippi rifle
better than his kith and kin.
Talking to you, listening, he would tilt
his head like a cougar's
finding range—the line—and lunge
straight into the lie you told yourself.

He pretended to have friends,
as though he'd read an instruction pamphlet—
bursting laughter that didn't fit,
swamping you with praise or sentiment,
but everything was trajectory.

In the great night battle at Franklin,
he ended up on the bottom of the line
piled deep as cordwood, tangled
with arms, legs, heads.
A brother.

Lucian Pinckney Montgomery Telling It

—Milliken's Bend, Louisiana, June 7, 1863

The way it was can't be told, how we
ran them down, rows of tents between levees,
grabbing their coffee, hardtack, bacon—berserkers
hog-calling, scattering them on top against sky
like crows mad from owls;

I can't tell how our yelling was stoppered up there
in morning sun, when we saw the black castle-gunboat
anchored tranquilly on the glass river, like silence
pressing before the cyclone—how the little puffs
from the behemoth's casemates held still,

then blasted apart, canister shuddering like a windmill,
someone drubbing a washboard with knuckles,
Lieutenant Dickerman's arm somersaulting
smack into Eubank's face, breaking his jaw,
and we crawdadded back down, one boy holding
a frying pan to his head;

and I can't tell how we left Dad Holloway up there
screaming, yellow butterflies flitting everywhere,
the solid shot steam-whistling over us
as I built a fire from driftwood and boiled
the first real coffee we'd had in a year—
a meal itself, tasting like winter wheat
blowing in cool clean wind, vista of dogwood;

their greasy haversacks were strewn
with likenesses and letters,
the bodies scattered like piles of laundry—
Tobe Gardenshire, Volney Graham, Issac Hull.

Making Cartridges

—Camp Brogden, Texas, March 1862

Pouring one-hundred ten
grains of powder into
the paper cylinder,
I wish for fingers
delicate as Sister's,
to tie the buck and ball—
the way the girls
at the Richmond arsenal
pass the end of the twine
around the bullet,
then over, under, through
the loop, a double-hitch,
for a .69 caliber—
fingers running fluidly
over a miniature
trussed-up head and torso,
a dressmaker's dummy,
fit for a wedding gown,
some boy loads into
a twelve-gauge shotgun.