Volume 8 | Spring 2018

by Gerard Sarnat

1.
No doves, yeah above’s been true for generations, WWII
through Korea & Nam, us girls told to join up for love
of meritocracy—or, unready, untrained, ordered to go

in to get some military discipline. Though no parents
or aunts or uncles bought Iraq—they figured Hussein
a personal Bush vendetta, for Cheney a pocketbook

issue with Rumsfeld plus their hawks willing to spend
others’ lives and lucre to invade a sovereign nation
unrelated to 9/11’s real crimes—we still enlisted.

2.
Lucky for me hostile fire dissipated ’cause muggy day
chopper doors were off … this stuck pig lost both legs
vaporized by an RPG fireball in his lap … blacking out

coming to blacking out coming to … too many times …
only knew it when toes can’t touch floorboard controls …
15 surgeries in 30 days under a fog of narcotics … medics

said I’d just died before docs brought my heart back … now
I seem to recall anger toward visiting politicos’ photo opps
like addicted wounded warriors was a fucking petting zoo.