New Poetry by Almyr Bump: “Plowing Water”

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IN BROKEN GROUND / image by Amalie Flynn

 

Plowing Water

We return to nightmare
ground, looking over the scene

of the crime, the copper
reflection of little clouds

in the torpid, tainted
canal masking disquiet

and chaos created
in us. Toiling in soft sand

underneath a burden
that would make a mule bleat,

we bitch and moan when told
to drop the rucks. Now we must

dig in, not like blind moles,
but like crippled gravediggers

in broken ground started
by high angle hell. Mangled

sandbags and serrated
pieces of metal pulled from

dirt wounds, also a hand
only missing two fingers.

Using a bayonet,
we bury rancid, fetid

flesh in a hole, puking,
not worried about a name.

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Almyr Bump

Almyr L. Bump is an infantry officer and former NCO, and currently works as a regional response planner for NORTHCOM Homeland Region I. His work appeared most recently appeared in Proud to Be: 9; Consequence; Free State Review, the North Carolina Literary Review, and the Northern New England Review.

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