A poem by BENJAMIN CAMPBELL.
Not a face you’d find photo-chopped on
National Geographic fronts. Not
safe enough for a shoot, anyway:
not with skies electrically alive,
drowning in a constant droning
that sets the teeth even during sleep.
In khaki with old Kalashnikov
too big, a brother’s hand-me-down,
he speeds past ruined, horizonless sands
and scans for contrails as surely as
a pupil bent to text. Inside him
lies the unexploded man, the knot
not yet unravelled – then a bullet
threads the needle of his eye. Stray
chance. Then his body, like other sacks
is simply shrugged from out the back
of the truck. Twenty other eyes,
ten unexploded mines, watch on.
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