Incarnate
This poem was published in BlazeVOX
Maybe, in the next one, I’ll come back as a
Slave or the spine of a book, white
Lettering against the thumb of a woman
In an airport on her way to Houston
For a conference on the matrix of money
And buildings and highways against
Yellow coastlines. From her thumb,
I’ll be able to read the way she had been
A slave, too, before waking up as a shell
Placed into a cannon and then launched
Upwards, arching, sailing in the gray
Artillery air of a morning in Russia, 1942,
Before slamming down in a plume of rock
And earth and metal.
Such a diminutive existence save the flight
Which, she had to admit, was gorgeous
Even in the cold and terrible falling, and now
In the bone and cloth and blood, laced
With soil and snow, under the sky, having
Buried or made amputees out of 46 men (not
Her fault), could she wonder:
Now what?