I packed your seabag
today: six pairs
of pants, shirts folded in
their rigid squares,
your socks balled up
like tan grenades.
I put my photo in
as well, laid
it there between
the Kevlar vest and heap
of clothes. Don’t weep,
the poet warns, don’t weep.
On 60 Minutes,
a soldier turns
his face toward us, shows
the camera his burns,
small metal slivers still
embedded in
the skin, his mouth a scrap
of ragged tin.
The young man’s face
was beautiful before,
smooth, unblemished as
my own. For war
is kind, I read. Great is
the battle-god
and great the auguries,
the firing squad,
the neon green of night
vision that cuts
the darkness open at
its seams, gutted
and spilling on the sand.
Great is the Glock,
the Aegis Weapons System,
the Blackhawk
circling. Great are the Ka-Bar
fighting knives,
the shells that sing through air,
as though alive.
JEHANNE DuBROW is the author of six books of poetry, including, most recently, Dots & Dashes (Southern Illinois University Press, 2017). This poem originally appeared in Stateside (Northwestern University Press, 2010), an exploration of the long history of military wives left to wait and wonder while their husbands are away at war.
[hr]
This article appears in the Summer 2018 issue (Vol. 30, No. 4) of MHQ—The Quarterly Journal of Military History with the headline: Home Alone
