WEBVTT

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There's a long elegy in this
book called "Personal Effects"

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that's for and
about an uncle that

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was killed in the Iran-Iraq
war, who was a draftee

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and whom I never met.

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And had a slim album with
him on the front lines,

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and there are some letters
that he had sent back

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home that have survived also.

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So that's the material
that I was working

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with in writing this poem.

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And it's long, but I'll just
read a few sections of it.

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"Daily I sit with the language
they've made of our language,

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to neutralize the capability
of low-dollar value items

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like you.

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You are what is referred
to as a casualty.

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Unclear whether from a
catalytic or frontal attack.

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Unclear the final time you
were addressed 'thou beloved.'

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It was, for us, a
catastrophic event.

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Just destroyed.

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Died of wounds
received in action.

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Yes, there was early warning.

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You said you were especially
scared of mortar rounds.

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In execution
planning, they weighed

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the losses, the sustainability,
and budgeted for x number.

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They budgeted for the
phone call to your mother

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and weighed that
against the amount saved

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in rations and your
taste for cigarettes,

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and the tea poured
your boys, and the tea

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you would have poured me
approaching hello, the change

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you collected in jars,
jumping a bit as the family

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learns to slam the
home's various doors.

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How could she say the
things she does not know?

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'A poison-tipped arrow,' she
told classmates at recess.

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'To the neck.'

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Hollow whistle of it
launched from a blowgun,

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cutting the air between them.

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According to most definitions,
I have never been at war.

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According to mine, most
of my life spent there.

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Anthrax in salt
and pepper shakers,

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patrol car windshields with
crosshairs painted over them,

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some badge holding my father's
pocket contents up to him

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and asking where
the cash is from.

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The war in Iraq, I
read, is over now.

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The last wheels
gathering into themselves

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as they lift off the sad tarmac.

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I say, 'begin.'

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I say, 'end.'

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And you are to believe
this is what happens.

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I say, '240 times'
before swallowing slime,

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and you go home to mother,
press a dog tag to your temple,

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press a gun to that, the tag
flowering into your skull.

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Thank God for
all-weather floor mats,

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and the slope of my personal
driveway, and beer cans

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that change color to let me
know they are cold enough.

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The full-sized cab smelling
of iron and Axe body spray.

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In 2003, a man held a fistful
of blood and brains to a PBS

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camera and yelled, 'Is this
the freedom they want for us?'

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It was from his friend's head.

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They were marching as
they figured Americans do.

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Between them, hardly three
horsepower, and still we

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shot him.

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We say the war is over,
but still the woman

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leans across the passenger seat.

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'My son, my son.'

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I wasn't there.

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So I can't know, can I?

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His mother's bed.

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A grief we don't
attempt to console.

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'I killed him,' she'll
tell me years later.

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'Fuck celestial guidance.

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I killed him,' she'll say, in
the midst of civil affairs.

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He surprises.

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He arrives, eyes taped
shut, torso held together

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by black thread, fridge cold.

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Grief is a closed area,
cluttered with his fork

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against the plate and
other forgotten musics.

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The enlarged ID photo
above her mantle

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means I can know Amoo, my
dear collateral damage,

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as only a state or
a school might do."

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