Checkpoint
The car came from nowhere, it came
from everywhere –
white blur and tire squall,
a four-door payload
of heat and pressure and steel.
When it is over, there is just
the tinkle of falling brass and a man
slumped
in a pool of broken glass
and coolant on hot asphalt,
calm as a corpse.
Doc cuts his shirt.
His face is weathered by years
of this. Layers
of skin and yellow fat pucker
from his open side.
He breathes.
In the trunk of the rusted-out sedan,
where the bomb
should be,
there are only two tanks,
an oxygen mask, and a box
filled with apricots and dates.
There are Four Ways to Die in an Explosion
First the blast rips limbs
from the torso. Throws tender bodies
against concrete walls. Pulverizes
bones against pavement. Those closest
to the bomb are never found
whole.
Then the fragmentation.
Little pieces of metal debris,
like the one that punched
an acorn-sized hole through the back
of Sergeant Gardner’s skull.
Heat from the explosion starts fires.
Vehicles Burn. Ammunition
burns. People burn,
alive. When a driver is trapped inside
white-hot steel, prayers
must be said silently for the smoke
to take him first.
Pressure collapses
lungs and bowels. The bleeding
happens on the inside.
It can be hours
before the skin turns pale
and the bulk of a person
drops.
None of the anatomy is safe,
so when the time comes, pray for the blast
or fragmentation. Pray for the heat that vaporizes.
Pray for the kind of pressure
that makes the world dark and silent
before the bitter taste of iron
and cold panic.
Good Friday, Udairi Range Complex, Kuwait
The first time I saw the sun
rise over the desert
it was 4 a.m.
Across miles of sand
and rusted hulks, the throbbing
of heavy guns echoed.
Over the horizon,
where the beginning and the end
meet and disappear, Friday arrived.
We saw the jeering crowds, the scourge
and spear-tip, the crown of thorns
and the crucifix, waiting.
What could we have known about atonement?
What did we know, then, of judging
the quick against the dead?
