Baggage Claim, In/Out Country: Sergeant Kokesh, Bomb Scare
BAGGAGE CLAIM
Duffel bags always
remind me of them—bulging
behind long zippers—
on television
the body bags flapped wildly
as copter blades churned
and the news anchor
dourly intoned the new stats
out of Vietnam.
More awful that we
saw so little—could have been
anything in them.
Now we see less—
imagine less than we see—
and are not sickened
by the sight of bags
spilling down in baggage claim,
tags wagging like tongues.
*
My student fights
to find words for a screenplay
about what he did
in Iraq—drama
yields to drudgery, in-jokes
crude as canvas.
It'll never do
to show green zone squabbles, green
soldier's ignorance—
but when a fire fight
goes south we're riveted by
what he can't yet say.
*
No Homeric hymns
for any of our soldiers—
though on the field there's
need for souvenirs:
fingers, ears—barbarism
that was once valor—
which made the poets sing—
so Achilles was remembered
and a death avenged.
We cannot stomach
what we make others do to
others we know less.
*
Men's hands tenderly
wash the torso of a friend
who will not be long.
They shave his chest bare
so the tape won't hurt, record
martyr's video.
Even his mother
couldn't have treated him better,
wanted something more.
The sky opens up
and gives them handfuls of rain
to anoint him with.
*
Each airport carousel
discharges them—thudding bodies
smack the metal lip,
the black bags tumble
one on top of the other—
sturdy zippers hold;
we hoist them over
a shoulder, march to our cars,
and drop them in trunks
for the long dark ride
to America's heartland
where fields wait cutting.
IN/OUT COUNTRY: SERGEANT KOKESH
Motel clock tocks. Clack
of luggage wheels catching
paver gaps, someone
whistles, belt buckle,
an ice machine churns into
operation, car
alarm's high-pitched wail—
deeper silence follows,
punctuated by
the crickets call-and-
response, the buzzed undertow
of the first streetlight
triggered by the dark.
Uneven breathing near me
says my family's
descended ladders
down to dream's wide corridors.
Why won't sleep take me?
The sounds I keep hearing
can't be here, but these nightmares
send me scurrying
for the pistol no
longer hidden beneath pillow.
I am home, I breathe,
This is where I want
to be. I hear a grinding.
Christ, it's my own teeth.
*
We were the only
Humvee that stopped on the road
leading through Basra
for the boy, clutching
his head in his hands. I saw
a welterweight failing
to ward off blind blows.
I called him habib, held both
his shoulders. He slowed.
When I pulled hands back
the blood-encrusted skull plates
began to flow darkly.
The smell was sickening.
I saw obsidian eyes
searching for answers.
He was beautiful.
He was dying. Put my canteen
in his hands. He clutched
onto it and smiled,
as if it meant something. Heard
his lips as he drank.
The clank of the chain
that had held it to my belt.
The rearview showed him
waving it from side
to side, the metal clacking
as he grinned his thanks.
*
My son rolls against
my side, still asleep, and pats
my face tenderly.
Get a grip, I hiss,
you can beat this thing. Banging
at the doors of sleep.
BOMB SCARE
Explosive persons are coming back to live among us.
—Brian Turner
As if all soldiers
donned the white moon suits required
to dismantle bombs,
each one spooled out on
a cable so that what's left
could be taken back—
alone with their fears
each walks towards a suspicious
package with their tools
and what they've been taught.
Each is at war with pulse rates
and the memory
of those who vanished,
each wrapped in a flag's colors,
praying whatever
prayers come to them.
In the country each calls home
we hold their lead wires
praying our own prayers,
wanting to back away but
knowing we cannot.
Whether we pull back
a bloodied suit or a man
who grins and high fives,
some of what's been lost
comes with him. We hold explosive
bodies in our arms.
