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Bensen 27 Robert Bensen Wargames The after-image of a pair of candles quotes the chair, settling in its craters on the rug. The silver urn summarizes the room on its potbelly, a fly ricochets off knicknacks and whatnots, and throbs and throbs like the Piper Cub we took for the Luftwaffe's last Stukka bomber stuttering above our mudwars in the bulldozed lot. For grenades we packed a handful of gunk around a stone and pulled a twig for the firing pin. We found a cracked sewerpipe big enough to shoot a human cannonball. And sometimes we'd fashion splints and drag ourselves around the neighborhood to terrify mothers, ghastly through the screen, who'd cross themselves, invoke the crippled saints, and yell for us to cut it out, what you pretend will always come to pass. And so it did. Being too young to die didn't stop a soul. Some came back strapped to a wheelchair, some left their minds around a piece of shrapnel, and some just disappeared into the Asian earth. In fairy tales, they always wake up when the world's right, in time for spring cleaning. But they always leave a cobweb in one corner, in case somebody bleeds. ...

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