War
1. Woman with the Lettuce
They are crowded in a line being shoved toward a truck.
Some seem stunned, some sick with fear.
She stands slightly outside the line,
black hat clamped on her head,
mouth compressed. In her hands she holds
an oversized lettuce, its white stems and
great, pale, veined leaves
unfolded in the dense air. She stares
directly at the camera, the large, delicate
plant in her grip, its glowing vanes
reaching out. Furious, she takes her
last chance to look right at us.
2. Legless Fighter Pilot
He takes his right calf in his hand,
lifts the whole leg up, straight,
turns, and swings it into the cockpit,
sliding into the seat. The left leg he
bends by hand at the knee, pulls it in, and
slams the hatch, then in his aircraft
he rises over the hills. In the sky
no one can walk, everyone
is a sitting duck, he banks and begins to hunt.
He is not afraid of anything now,
not even his coffin—hell, he is part
native oak already, and if he
lost his arms he’d replace them. All he
wants is to bag as many as he can,
crash them into the ground like birds into a sack with their
useless legs trailing out the mouth of it.
3. What Could Happen
When the men and women went into hiding,
they knew what could happen if the others caught them.
They knew their bodies might be undone,
their sexual organs taken as if
to destroy the mold so the human could not
be made anymore. They knew what the others
went for—the center of the body,
and not just for the agony and horror but to
send them crudely barren into death,
throwing those bodies down in the village at dawn
to show that all was ended. But each
time the others dumped a body in the square,
a few more people took to the woods,
as if springing up, there,
from the loam dark as the body’s wound.
4. The Dead
The ground was frozen, the coffin-wood burned
for fuel. So the dead were covered with something
and taken on a child’s sled to the cemetery
in the subzero air. They lay on the snow,
some wrapped in rough cloth
bound with rope, like the tree’s ball of roots
when it waits to be planted; others wound
in sheets, their gauze, tapered shapes
stiff as cocoons which will split down the center
when the new life inside is prepared;
but most lay like corpses, their coverings
coming loose, naked calves
hard as corded wood spilling
from under a tarp, a hand reaching out
as if to the bread made of glue and sawdust,
to the icy winter, and the siege.
5. When He Came for the Family
They looked at their daughter standing with her music
in her hand, the page covered with dots and
lines, with its shared language. They knew
families had been taken. What they did not know
was the way he would pick her cello up
by the scroll neck and take its amber
torso-shape and lift it and break it
against the fireplace. The brickwork crushed the
close-grained satiny wood, they stood and
stared at him.
6. The Signal
When they brought his body back, they told
his wife how he’d died:
the general thought they had taken the beach,
and sent in his last reserves. In the smokescreen,
the boats moved toward shore. Her husband
was the first man in the first boat
to move through the smoke and see the sand
dark with bodies, the tanks burning,
the guns thrown down, the landing craft
wrecked and floored with blood. In the path of the
bullets and shells from the shore, her husband had
put on a pair of white gloves
and turned his back on the enemy,
motioning to the boats behind him
to turn back. After everyone else
on his boat was dead
he continued to signal, then he, too,
was killed, but the other boats had seen him
and turned back. They gave his wife the medal,
and she buried him, and at night floated through
a wall of smoke, and saw him at a distance
standing in a boat, facing her,
the gloves blazing on his hands as he motioned her back.
7. The Leader
Seeing the wind at the airport blowing on his hair,
lifting it up where it
1. Woman with the Lettuce
They are crowded in a line being shoved toward a truck.
Some seem stunned, some sick with fear.
She stands slightly outside the line,
black hat clamped on her head,
mouth compressed. In her hands she holds
an oversized lettuce, its white stems and
great, pale, veined leaves
unfolded in the dense air. She stares
directly at the camera, the large, delicate
plant in her grip, its glowing vanes
reaching out. Furious, she takes her
last chance to look right at us.
2. Legless Fighter Pilot
He takes his right calf in his hand,
lifts the whole leg up, straight,
turns, and swings it into the cockpit,
sliding into the seat. The left leg he
bends by hand at the knee, pulls it in, and
slams the hatch, then in his aircraft
he rises over the hills. In the sky
no one can walk, everyone
is a sitting duck, he banks and begins to hunt.
He is not afraid of anything now,
not even his coffin—hell, he is part
native oak already, and if he
lost his arms he’d replace them. All he
wants is to bag as many as he can,
crash them into the ground like birds into a sack with their
useless legs trailing out the mouth of it.
3. What Could Happen
When the men and women went into hiding,
they knew what could happen if the others caught them.
They knew their bodies might be undone,
their sexual organs taken as if
to destroy the mold so the human could not
be made anymore. They knew what the others
went for—the center of the body,
and not just for the agony and horror but to
send them crudely barren into death,
throwing those bodies down in the village at dawn
to show that all was ended. But each
time the others dumped a body in the square,
a few more people took to the woods,
as if springing up, there,
from the loam dark as the body’s wound.
4. The Dead
The ground was frozen, the coffin-wood burned
for fuel. So the dead were covered with something
and taken on a child’s sled to the cemetery
in the subzero air. They lay on the snow,
some wrapped in rough cloth
bound with rope, like the tree’s ball of roots
when it waits to be planted; others wound
in sheets, their gauze, tapered shapes
stiff as cocoons which will split down the center
when the new life inside is prepared;
but most lay like corpses, their coverings
coming loose, naked calves
hard as corded wood spilling
from under a tarp, a hand reaching out
as if to the bread made of glue and sawdust,
to the icy winter, and the siege.
5. When He Came for the Family
They looked at their daughter standing with her music
in her hand, the page covered with dots and
lines, with its shared language. They knew
families had been taken. What they did not know
was the way he would pick her cello up
by the scroll neck and take its amber
torso-shape and lift it and break it
against the fireplace. The brickwork crushed the
close-grained satiny wood, they stood and
stared at him.
6. The Signal
When they brought his body back, they told
his wife how he’d died:
the general thought they had taken the beach,
and sent in his last reserves. In the smokescreen,
the boats moved toward shore. Her husband
was the first man in the first boat
to move through the smoke and see the sand
dark with bodies, the tanks burning,
the guns thrown down, the landing craft
wrecked and floored with blood. In the path of the
bullets and shells from the shore, her husband had
put on a pair of white gloves
and turned his back on the enemy,
motioning to the boats behind him
to turn back. After everyone else
on his boat was dead
he continued to signal, then he, too,
was killed, but the other boats had seen him
and turned back. They gave his wife the medal,
and she buried him, and at night floated through
a wall of smoke, and saw him at a distance
standing in a boat, facing her,
the gloves blazing on his hands as he motioned her back.
7. The Leader
Seeing the wind at the airport blowing on his hair,
lifting it up where it
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