A murder of crows looks on in silence from the eucalyptus trees above as we stand over the bodies— who look as if they might roll over to wake from a dream and question us about the blood drying on their scalps, the bullets lodged in the back of their skulls, to ask where their […]
It happens on a Monday, at 11:20 a.m., as tower guards eat sandwiches and seagulls drift by on the Tigris river. Prisoners tilt their heads to the west though burlap sacks and duct tape blind them. The sound reverberates down concertina coils the way piano wire thrums when given slack. And it happens like this, […]
Nothing but the hurt left here. Nothing but bullets and pain and the bled out slumping and all the fucks and goddamns and Jesus Christs of the wounded. Nothing left here but the hurt. Believe it when you see it. Believe it when a 12-year-old rolls a grenade into the room. Or when a sniper […]
No matter the barking of the dogs,the caravan marches on.–Old Iraqi Proverb A long queue of container shipsstand at anchor in the Persian Gulf.They carry .50 caliber machine gunsin packing grease, dunnage, ammo crates,millions of bullets laid side by side,toilet paper, insecticides, light bulbs.The dockside floodlights humwith mosquitoes and malaria. Craneshoist connexes onto flatbed […]
Brian Turner, former infantry team leader for the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team in Iraq and author of the forthcoming collection Here, Bullet (Alice James), talks about being an “embedded poet” in Iraq and the genesis of his poems, Eulogy and Body Bags.