1.
Celebrate them.
2.
Celebrate the soldier who went to war
Just to kill.
This soldier accused of shooting and
Killing civilians. How the men from
His own platoon. They say he did it.
He shot civilians. He shot at civilians.
Shot a girl in Iraq in a flowered hijab
In her stomach.
Blooming wound. Like a daisy eye or
Hole in her gut. How he shot an old
Unarmed man dead. His white robe
Drenched red. The stain a spreading
Blood sun.
And they say they saw him. Saw him
Kill a teenager.
An ISIS fighter. Wounded and waiting
For a medic on the dirt floor in Mosul.
How they say the soldier said
Lips into a radio
Don’t touch him.
Because he’s mine.
Before driving his knife deep and deep.
Hunting knife
Into the boy’s neck. Through skin and
Muscle. Tissue and ligaments an artery.
3.
Or how
There is a photograph.
The soldier squatting in the sand.
Full battle rattle next to the ISIS boy.
His dead body. Face up. Arms bare.
Calves exposed. His legs sprawled.
And the soldier. How he has the boy.
His hair. Gripped in the fist. And he is
Yanking. Yanking him. The boy’s head.
His face up. For the camera.
How in the photograph.
The boy is dead.
And the soldier is smiling.
Because the boy is not a boy.
He is deer kill.
3.
Celebrate him.
Celebrate that soldier and the way it felt
When he held that soft sweat tuft of
Human hair.
Between his thumb and fingers like.
Like feathers.
4.
And why. Why stop there?
How there are more. More soldiers
5.
Soldiers who stood over dead bodies
On a video. Standing over the dead
Bodies of Taliban fighters they killed.
Killed in war in Afghanistan.
How the soldiers exposed their penises
And urinated on the bodies. Urinating
On the dead bodies or how
They are laughing.
Celebrate them. Celebrate those soldiers.
Celebrate how they felt when that stream
Of urine. Their urine.
Hit the men. Hit the dead bodies. Hit dead
Legs and dead torsos. Dead faces. Splashing
Open dead eyes. Into dead mouths.
Celebrate how.
How it felt. When their urine
Filled the dead men’s nostrils.
6.
Celebrate Abu Ghraib.
Celebrate that it happened. Celebrate
Soldiers who stripped prisoners naked.
Raped them with truncheons. Strapped
Dog collars around their necks. Soldiers
Who dragged men on leashes like they
Were dogs. Who placed bags over heads.
Made men stand on boxes with wires
And electrodes attached to fingers and
Skin. Soldiers. Soldiers. Soldiers who
Tortured men.
Soldiers who piled men. Piled men up
And into contorted piles. These piles
Of tortured human flesh.
7.
Celebrate them.
8.
Celebrate all the soldiers who do it. Who
Do things like this.
Celebrate them even though. Even though
The military is filled and filled and filled
With soldiers who
Would never. Who never do these things.
9.
Just don’t say. It is because
They did nothing wrong.
Don’t say. Don’t say they didn’t do it.
10.
Celebrate them because you know.
You know they did.
11.
Celebrate them because you like it.
Very powerful. Thank you for sharing this. Seeing recent images of gallagher celebrating at Mar-a-lago with trump was hard to process. I cannot imagine the impact on all those service members who abhor his actions and his attitude. What a disgrace to service and to country.
Thank you for this tough poem that forces us to confront the hideous Gallagher episode and the things we have conveniently come to forget, like Abu Ghraib. It seems the explicit approval of a war criminal like Gallagher by the president is enough to counteract and undermine the daily integrity and acts of honor and professionalism of thousands of his fellow service members. What a shame.
Amalie, your poetry reminds me of the book ‘War Flower’ by Brooke King in that it does not romanticize war. It’s raw and shocking and you both write about gut-wrenching atrocities. The government would not really show us what goes on in war. It takes people like you and Brooke — thank you.
Very powerful writing! It takes courage for a soldier, or anyone in a similar tightly knit group, so dependent on each other, to speak out against sadistic behavior by one of his/her own. Then to have that person’s commander in chief make a hero out of the murdering sadist, and for personal gain, is beyond immoral.