Saturday, August 07, 2021

DEUS EX MACHINA, AFGHANISTAN

by Bonnie Naradzay


Gen. Austin “Scott” Miller speaks during an official handover ceremony in Kabul. Hours later, Miller departed in a Black Hawk helicopter. —The Washington Post, July 12, 2021. Credit: Wakil Kohsar/AFP/Getty Images via The Washington Post.


The Vietnamese mechanic in the VW repair place 
fixed my car radio today and as I drove off,
I heard the BBC’s news about Afghanistan:
now directed from Tampa, Florida, are killing
the doomed citizens caught in the crossfire 
between the Taliban and the Afghan troops, 
abandoned in what’s called a “civil war,” 
but it’s not. Translators are beheaded now
The war cost over two trillion dollars, not 
counting the dead, the maimed, ruined lives. 
(“History will not forget it,” Haji Sakhi said, 
as he fled with his daughters to save them from 
twenty years ago? Mr. Dilawar was dead, 
they said, before they cut him down. "Our job," 
"is just not to forget." His Black Hawk helicopter
lifted him up in a cloud of dust: our deus ex machina.


Bonnie Naradzay leads poetry salons at a day shelter for homeless people and also at a retirement community, both in Washington DC. Poems are in AGNI, New Letters (Pushcart nomination), RHINO, Kenyon Review Online, Tampa Review, Tar River Poetry, Florida Review Online, EPOCH, The American Journal of Poetry, Xavier Review, Pinch (Pushcart nomination), The New Verse News, and countless others.