It Was a Long Time before the Bones Spoke

I can explain myself as a soldier, lessons of blood earned by heart. I can reach through words and pull you closer to war, the one you paid for, rung by sung a saga history misses in its rumble through the ruins. Glimpse the glitter-green tracers at Fire Base Nervous, small unit tactics with indirect fire near LZ Shithole, booby traps and body bags up the Song Con, later, in a footnote, we died there.

Oh! babies in the third degree order of burns. I don’t remember which day on the short count, but one clear memory dances me, dodging bullets behind a grave mound, Oh! blessed mothers of Agent Orange, in a cemetery east of Plei-ku. Oh! little sister of the holy flames of napalm: they put their children in the ground, and wail a long time.