by Stan Marcus
A grenade was tossed into a soldier's pocket.
He paused, aware of the sudden weight on his
buttocks. It could have been an orange or an apple,
but, no, it was a grenade, a metallic fruit,
although not a gift from an aunt forced upon
him at a family gathering when he was eight
to alleviate his intense boredom. Nor a stone
that had levitated from the Mesopotamian sand.
It happened spontaneously, not like a thunderstorm
when the sky is suddenly blackened by fierce clouds
unsatisfied with occupation and demanding autonomy,
freedom, but more like a snake crushing an ankle as
one passes a burnt-out shrub. Then soldiers adjacent
to him, tense and compliant, heard a curious pop
like a balloon bursting at a birthday party where the
festivities went on until the mothers had had enough.
Stan Marcus's poems have appeared in The Virginia Quarterly Review, Stand, The Journal of New Jersey Poets, Poetry East, The Literary Review, Prairie Schooner, The Minnesota Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Denver Quarterly, College English, The Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, Confrontation, Permafrost, GW Review, Ironwood, Kansas Quarterly, and other periodicals. Two of his poems were included in the anthology For a Living: The Poetry of Work, published by the University of Illinois Press.