War Babies

14 the minnesota review Stanley Marcus War Babies The bullets whistle like crickets. Down water the small children huddle not by a fire where mickies blacken on twigs but under stones like rodents gnawing the air and aroused for a split second deciding. The trampling down bushes, the leaves cracking, the branches bent back like whips. . .the forest is squeezing them till they pop. They draw a bead on the encroaching brogans and, listen, you hear the clicks of the hammers and the eyes rising as a steam bubbles from the dirt from sheer friction. There is no fear, here in the seeds because learning was a one-room detonation called birth. There is nothing to imagine and no toys but wounds, and what is dead was not living. Suffer them for the kingdom is seething, and like lizards on extended legs lunging forward and backward, they know the rudiments of behavior, and are satisfied when the night screams. mickies; unwrapped potatoes ...