Sunday, March 19, will be the 20th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, the official beginning of the war there. The war was a disaster, as many of us said it would be. It succeeded in removing Saddam Hussein from power, but plunged Iraq and the region into chaos, giving birth eventually to the Islamic State, costing all involved both lives and treasure.
I offer these poems, written at various times over the last 20 years in response, not as commemoration but as warning. There is nothing about this war that warrants commemoration. We mourn the lives lost, and lament the damage wrought on those we sent to fight and on those who bore the heaviest burden — the people in Iraq and the rest of the region.
This first poem ran at The Potomac in 2007:
The Crash
This feeling comes daily,
the cleaver like a magnet
to metal, cold like the gun
she carried in the desert,
the cleaver used to chop the meat,
could maybe slice into her arm.
She fights the urge, of course,
makes the dinner, blanching peas,
stirring sauce, pushes the images –
people losing limbs, that kid’s
eyes hot with fear like the air,
cowering in the dark
when she entered the burned-out
building ahead of her platoon,
the one from where they say
the sniper shot – to the recesses
of her mind, swallows pills,
meditates, but still she finds
herself heading south on Route 1
counting utility poles,
wondering if she could shift
the wheel, aim and drive it hard,
car’s front end crumpling like her
sanity with the impact.
The next few poems are from Certainties and Uncertainties. The cover art was drawn by Rob Stolzer, a long-time friend and artist who teaches at University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point.
Poems from Stealing Copper.