like cordwood / we stack them

 My lungs slip out of my / ribcage to flutter / like broken wings

The ground is angled, darkened / by fireball.

Women hold our void.

as if I too could plume carmine / beneath the sun’s fingers.

blackness / all I can / think of

The stalls burst with baskets of figs and dates, the / smell of kebab lamb and warm naan.

I’m still tired from that last patrol

Another day across the long valley road

here we lie our things in the
Graveyard of Empires

we rise, together, one more time

We fight for some peace, but peace we have not.

bleached white as bone

Colonels make speeches / in which they must mention / their spouses, feminine endurance, / a devotion to sacrifice.

Now I understood / the bake sales for Dragon Skin Armor requested by buddies / who claimed that Army IBA failed after only one shot.

Routines fall into cadence, but still, / truth has a roguishness about it—

You can never understand the cost my / Service has had on my body and soul.

You come home from the war... you are different now.