Photo by Krystie Mikaere
After we drive into the barren hills
where the earth unrolls
itself for miles, where the soil
is stale as cookies sent
in boxes from the Youngstown
USO, the gunners fire
their machine guns
to the smooth face
of a ridge wall—
small explosions of dust
lift to the sky
like fading desert larks,
and the rest of us shoot
from our knees, our chests...
When we’re done
there is the rain of copper
casings across the dirt,
so as we convoy
back to the FOB,
from nowhere the bedouins
come to collect the shells
in sacks like coins,
not one left behind—
and then the wind
molds our boot-prints,
our tire-tracks
slowly back
to the landscape’s shape.
