What the Battlefield Forgot to Bury​

Issue 18

following the map / following the anthem / after the first boy
mistook a rifle
for inheritance
 
 
country     split
like bone
 
and somebody’s mother
is sewing dusk
into a wound
which won't close.
 
 
Here lies--
 
no, not lies.
 
Here burns
the alphabet of shrapnel:
 
```
 A for aftermath 
 B for bodycount 
 C for child 
      (crossed out) 
 D for dust entering the mouth 
      of the unreturned 
```
 
 
War arrives first
as grammar:
 
orders.
march.
fire.
 
Then as weather:
 
ash.
sirens.
metal rain.
 
Then as hunger.
 
A sentence is the name given to a village
interrupted
by boots.
 
A school becomes
a smoke-filled chalkboard.
 
A church--
roofless psalm.
 
 
Listen:
 
staticstaticstatic
gungun
mothermothermother
run--
 
 
Who names the dead
when the tongue
has been shelled open?
 
Who folds the flag
In the absence of hands, when?
 
The teacher is the one who teaches the children
to draw trees again
in the time of all the green things
resembles camouflage?
 
 
The generals speak
in clean statistics.
 
However, the field knows better.
 
The field keeps
teeth.
buttons.
a wedding ring
clenched by roots.
 
Excavate this:
 
a photograph
melted into mud--
two sisters
before history
made one of them
news.
 
 
And still
the broadcasters say
collateral
as if language
cannot also
be a weapon.
 
 
I want to write
peace
 
The text looks like every line breaks
like artillery.
 
I want to write
home
 
but the page
smells of cordite.
 
 
So I offer instead:
 
fragments.
 
helmet.
rib.
lullaby.
charred bread.
dogtag.
silence.
 
Because war does not end
when treaties do.
 
It lingers
 
in amputated dawns,
In the beginning of the door's shock,
in men who hesitate
at thunder,
in women learning
how to grieve
without remains.
 
 
And somewhere
under all these ruins,
 
a seed--
small as refusal--
prepares
its green rebellion.

---

COLLINS CHUKWUDI OPARAOCHA is a writer and poet. He lives and writes in Turkey.

---