Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting by Kevin Powers Read Free Book Online Page A

it,
    you would call the words devices,
    if you found them threatening in any way,
    for ease of communication
    and because you would marvel
    at this new, broad category.
    This is another way of saying
    we’d rely on jargon to understand each other,
    like calling a year a tour,
    even though there are never any women
    in bustled dresses carrying umbrellas
    to protect complexions. In moments
    you might think these words were grand,
    in an odd way, never imagining you would
    find a need to come back to them,
    or that you’d find days
    that you were desperate
    for the potential of metal,
    wires, and hidden things.
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    And if this poem was somehow traveling
    with you
    in the turret of a Humvee,
    you would not see the words
    buried at the edges of the road.
    You would not see the wires. You would not
    see the metal. You would not see the danger
    in the architecture
    of a highway overpass.
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    If this poem has left you deaf,
    if the words in it are smoking,
    if parts of it have passed through your body
    or the bodies of those you love, this will go a long way
    toward explaining why you will, in later years,
    prefer to sleep on couches. If these words have caused
    casualties, then this poem will understand
    that, oftentimes, to be in bed
    is to be one too many layers
    away from wakefulness.
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    If this poem was made of words
    the sergeant said—after, like, don’t
    worry boys, it’s war, it happens—
    as the cab filled up with opaque smoke
    and laughter, then it would be natural
    for you to think of rote— rauta,
    the old Norse called it, the old
    drumbeat of break of wave
    on shore—as an analogue
    for the silence that has filled your ears
    again
    and particles of light
    funneled through the holes
    made by metal meeting metal
    meeting muscle meeting bone.
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    You would not see. You would not hear. You would not
    be blamed for losing focus for a second: this poem
    does not come with an instruction manual. These words
    do not tell you how to handle them.
    You would not be blamed
    for what they’d do if they were metal,
    or for after taking aim at a man holding a telephone in his hand
    in an alley. You would not be blamed for thinking
    words could have commanded it.
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    If this poem had fragments
    of metal coming out of it, if these words were your best friend’s legs,
    dangling, you might not care or even wonder whether
    or not it was only the man’s mother on the other end
    of the telephone line. For one thing, it would be
    exonerating. Secondly, emasculating (in the metaphorical
    sense of male powerlessness, notwithstanding the likelihood
    that the mess the metal made of your friend’s legs and trousers
    has left more than that detached). If this poem had wires for words,
    you would want someone to pay. 
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    If this poem had wires coming out of it,
    you wouldn’t read it.
    If these words were made of metal
    they could kill us all. But these
    are only words. Go on,
    they are safe to fold and put into your pocket.
    Even better, they are safe
    to be forgotten.

Self-Portrait in Sidewalk Chalk
    Once, when seeing
    my shadow on the ground
    I tried to outline it
    in chalk. It kept moving
    as I knelt, and as the sun
    moved itself from horizon
    to horizon, the chalk
    was changed.
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    It ranged from arm
    to curve of elbow,
    from my altered
    organs to the shadow
    that a church bell cast
    beneath the movement
    of the sun.
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    It finally fell
    and evening came
    and dark spread
    into the wide world.
    My shadow disappeared,
    disloyal, and the chalk
    showed only myself
    strapped monstrously
    into a chair.

A History of Yards
    My mother, in the porch light, sets out
    two tea services in the tilted dirt
    of her yard, gently rests the porcelain cups
    and saucers in two places near level, seems
    not to be watching the bloom of azaleas
    first submission to air, but is and has been.
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    I am far from her. Not hearing the mortars
    descending and knowing