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:

American bombs dropped from the air, in a war

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; 

you can read about how we betrayed them. 

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 

the Taliban again.) We turned off the electricity 

in Bagram and left in the dead of night. Who recalls 

the taxi driver, whom our countrymen tortured 

in Bagram, the old abandoned Soviet base, nearly 

twenty years ago? Mr. Dilawar was dead, 

they said, before they cut him down. "Our job," 

explained the last American commander there,

"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.

A VETERAN POKÉMON GO TRAINER LEAVING BAGRAM, AFGHANISTAN, WRITES HAIKU

by Randy Brown

Digital rodents and abandoned Pokemon presided over the streets of Bagram Airfield on the day news broke that U.S. troops had left the base. All U.S. forces have left Bagram, which for much of the past 20 years was the largest military base in Afghanistan, U.S. defense officials announced Friday. But the animated critters and some of what’s left on base are visible in digitally animated form through the game app Pokemon Go. The game allows players to walk to real-life locations and catch or battle digital monsters, who can be found using the app’s barebones version of Google Maps. Some of the Pokemon left by U.S. soldiers remain at their posts.  —Stars and Stripes, July 2, 2021

1.

at the Pink Palace

our old brigade headquarters

Jigglypuff awaits

 

2.

in a clamshell gym

sweating in treadmill safety

I was Wartortle

 

3.

old Russian minefield

where I caught my Charizard

best day of my war

 

4.

after deployment

I can speak more Pikachu

than I can Pashtu

 

5.

farewell, Poké-stan

we leave you a ghost army

stardust and candies

Randy Brown embedded with his former Iowa Army National Guard unit as a civilian journalist in Afghanistan, May-June 2011. A 20-year veteran with one overseas deployment, he subsequently authored the 2015 poetry collection Welcome to FOB Haiku: War Poems from Inside the Wire. He also co-edited the 2019 anthology Why We Write: Craft Essays on Writing War. He is a three-time poetry finalist in the Col. Darron L. Wright Memorial Writing Awards administered by the literary journal Line of Advance. His poetry and non-fiction have appeared widely in print and on-line, including most recently in the graphic anthology True War Stories published by Z2 Comics. As “Charlie Sherpa,” he blogs about modern war poetry at www.fobhaiku.com, and about military-themed writing at www.aimingcircle.org. 

LEFT BEHIND IN AFGHANISTAN

by Tricia Knoll

“Taliban Try to Polish Their Image as They Push for Victory: The insurgents are trying to rebrand themselves as effective governors as they capture new territory. But there is more evidence that they are unreformed.” —The New York Times, July 6, 2021. Photo: Members of the Taliban in Laghman Province in eastern Afghanistan last March. Credit: Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times.

American stuff. Artificial Christmas trees. Humvees. 

Boots that mark the Afghan soil with the treads

of Americans. Little shops sell discards

like aluminum mugs. No longer sell the body armor. 

They do sell Jif peanut butter, alarm clocks, 

backpacks festooned with swooshes, 

instant coffee, exercise stretch ropes, 

hand sanitizer and tea bags. 

 

Bagram first the pulverized Soviet airfield, 

turned burgeoning American stronghold

with Pizza Huts and Subways, field hospital

and a prison gifted to the Afghan defense ministry.  

 

Then the women left behind. What will they be asked

to wear, to think, to learn? What will divide urban

women from rural? Will medical care advance?

What happens to the voices of the poets, activists,

radio DJs, victims of domestic violence? What music

will they hear? What input to the terms of peace? 

Will electricity return as swiftly as sharia justice? 

When women hold up half the sky,

never leave behind the hope of soaring.

Tricia Knoll is a feminist poet who never takes for granted the freedoms she has enjoyed while advocating for the role of women in our world. Her poetry appears widely in journals and anthologies. 

THE KNOWN UNKNOWN

by Margaret Rozga



He squints through his narrow glasses, looking
above the shoulder and beyond the ear
of the journalist.

He takes the numerical part
of the question, ruminates,
Two, three.  Not so many.

He draws his lip in an upward
arch flat against his face.  His teeth edge
into the opening of what passes for a smile.

Death falls from the sky
Death marches on the capitol.
Truck bombs, IEDs, rocket propelled grenade launchers.
Death strikes back.

Put death in prison.  Abu Ghraib.  Guantanamo.
A black hole at Bagram.  Secret centers of interrogation.
Enhanced death.

Waterboard until the interrogated wish they were dead.
Construct your smile out of this vacuum.


Margaret Rozga has published two books, Two Hundred Nights and One Day and Though I Haven’t Been to Baghdad.  Her most recent poems and book reviews appear in the Spring 2014 issue of Verse Wisconsin online.