A warrior poet

Brian Turner served seven years in the U.S. Army. One of them was as an infantry team leader in Iraq with the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division. That experience left an indelible impression on Turner and resulted in his book, “Here, Bullet,” from which these poems are drawn. His new book of poetry, “Phantom Noise,” is to be published in April from Alice James Books.

What Every Soldier Should Know

“To yield to force is an act of necessity, not of will;

It is at best an act of prudence.”

-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

If you hear gunfire on a Thursday afternoon,

It could be for a wedding, or it could be for you.

Always enter a home with your right foot;

The left is for cemeteries and unclean places.

O-guf! Tera armeek is rarely useful.

It means Stop! Or I’ll shoot.

Sabah el Khair is effective.

It means Good Morning.

Inshallah means Allah be willing.

Listen well when it is spoken.

You will hear the RPG coming for you.

Not so the roadside bomb.

There are bombs under the overpasses,

In trashpiles, in bricks, in cars.

There are shopping carts with clothes soaked

In foogas, a sticky gel of homemade napalm.

Parachute bombs and artillery shells

sewn into the carcasses of dead farm animals.

Graffiti sprayed onto the overpasses:

I will kell you, American.

Men wearing vests rigged with explosives

walk up, raise their arms and say Inshallah.

There are men who earn eighty dollars

To attack you, five thousand to kill.

Small children who will play with you,

old men with their talk, women who offer chai --

and any one of them

may dance over your body tomorrow.

Here, Bullet

If a body is what you want,

then here is bone and gristle and flesh.

Here is the clavicle-snapped wish,

the aorta’s opened valves, the leap

thought makes at the synaptic gag.

Here is the adrenaline rush you crave,

that inexorable flight, that insane puncture

into heat and blood. And I dare you to finish

what you’ve started. Because here, Bullet,

here is where I complete the word you bring

hissing through the air, here is where I moan

the barrel’s cold esophagus, triggering

my tongue’s explosives for the rifling I have

inside of me, each twist of the round

spun deeper, because here, Bullet,

here is where the world ends, every time.

Repatriation Day

Shalamcheh, at the Iran-Iraq border

The skeletons rest in their boxes

still slack-jawed twenty years later,

as if amazed at their own deaths.

I want to lie down among them,

to be wrapped in sheets like the flags

of nations, banded in light and shadow.

I want the Red Cross worker to lean over

so I can see that tired look in her eyes

as she writes down my name.

-- For Koder

For Vultures, A Dystopia

For their hunger, for their patience,

for each circle traced in shadow

and sunk down in the earth

I offer the remorse of flesh,

unflowered and darkening, my life

a gift of heat and steam.

Today, the sun is as high

as the arc of the heavens

will carry it. Let the vultures rise, too.

Let them witness every plume

of smoke, every fallen soldier,

every woman’s last kiss

for the ones they love,

and even me when the time comes,

let the vultures feed on me,

let them tear me apart.

Dreams from the Malaria Pills (Barefoot)

Tamaghis ba’dan yaswadda waghdas nawfana ghadis

He’s coughing up shrapnel, jagged and rough,

wondering if this is what the incantation brings,

those dreamwords shaping desire into being.

He’s questioning why blood is needed, and so much,

why he’s wheeled through his hometown streets

on a gurney draped in camouflaged sheets.

Ibn Khaldun takes each piece of metal from him:

These are to be made into daggers,

precious gifts, the souvenirs of death.

You carry the pearls of war within you, bombs

swallowed whole and saved for later.

Give them to your children. Give them to your love.

Curfew

The wrong is not in the religion;

The wrong is in us.

-- Saier T.

At dusk, bats fly out by the hundreds.

Water snakes glide in the ponding basins

behind the rubbled palaces. The mosques

call their faithful in, welcoming

the moonlight as prayer.

Today, policemen sunbathed on traffic islands

and children helped their mothers

string clothes to the line, a slight breeze

filling them with heat.

There were no bombs, no panic in the streets.

Sgt. Gutierrez didn’t comfort an injured man

who cupped pieces of his friend’s brain

in his hands; instead, today,

white birds rose from the Tigris.