by Benjamin Bellet 

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Private Wilson,
I’ve had it with you.
Close your cock-holster
and get in line.
It’s time for weapons issue
and no-one here gives two shits
about your dead mama,
your dead sister, preferred
pronunciation of your first name:
“ra-SHARD.” No-one cares.
Pot-bellied & skinny-armed,
late from another night
of off-label narcotics,
already balding at twenty-three
a second head growing
beneath your chin.

Private Wilson
when your wife sent you panties
after a month in country
we flew them from the outpost flagpole
and you smiled. Two weeks before
the second letter. On night shift
I heard your snuffling
in the parapet
but not loud enough
for Sgt. Diaz to hear.
But the next day
you put on your mother’s plastic
rosary beads, pulled on last night’s pair
of cum-stained socks
for another patrol
for the next
two-hundred mornings.

Private Wilson,
when you came home
they offered you cognitive processing
alcohol cessation
and full disability
and that was wrong.
What you needed was
to fall asleep in your harness
in a Black Hawk a-tilt
over leaning crags,
your big fuzzy head on my shoulder.
I still remember
your nicotine breath
intent on my scalp
while we knelt on the berm
and I showed you how
to sight your scope.

Private Wilson,
I love you.
Your twenty-three years
and your four spare teeth.
Lover of Monster energy
four step-kids & faithless
wife of forty-three,
savant of the diesel engine
and ASIP radio.
When we came home
before you locked the bathroom door
and didn’t come out
you stood in formation
knock-kneed under scarecrow hips
your patrol cap still too big
eyes shining with gratitude
rolling down enormous cheeks.

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Benjamin Bellet is a former U.S. Army officer who now treats young adults with serious mental illness in Boston, Massachusetts. He earned his Ph.D. in clinical psychology at Harvard University. His poems have been published in the Colorado Review, MAYDAY Magazine, Peripheries, and elsewhere.

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