Poetry

Here we are

in our doughboys and camos, our doughty frocks

with drips of bitter on the sleeve, our passions rev ving

their pulp to pittance at a gas station

in the city that never peeps —

and here is the city

with its Martians in leather and excoriated thunderbolt-

boas, its Bible-trippers, its vintage bazookas for barter

not sale, its reluctance to be reluctant, its speed

for hire, into which we atrophy ourselves to briefly fit —

and we are never

so close to the joys of oil, the grease inside which a fat

becomes a fit, as we bellow magnanimously praise

on the least well of those who pass, ones who are dying

we salute: we are coming from the war, they are going

to the war —