BORDER PATROL, ARIZONA

by Jonathan Travelstead

In-processing. Sunnyside High School, Tucson

The square-jawed sergeant snatches my orders.

Nothing that matters burns in the desert. Congratulations,

Airman First Class- You’re a medic. Shunts me

to a female private beneath the basketball hoop who,

with an IV and an orange bruised soft as skin,

instructs me with lessons on the military’s care towards aliens.

Cups my orange-clasped hand in hers. Finds the sweet spot

in four or less punctures. Suddenly it’s my lone hand

which holds the fruit. My hand puncturing its rind

with eighteen gauge holes like pinpoint windows

I imagine unlatch from the inside. Because the only beliefs

that matter in battle are attendance, minutes later

I find myself burdened beneath kevlar, a helmet

two wars old and missing its lining. Topographic maps

of dusty cattle-roads (useless after the first washout)

winged under one arm. Under the other, orders amended

with signatures validating my crude proficiency in Tex-Mex,

the Law of Armed Conflict, rules of engagement

briefings, and a crash course in medical training

to include intubation on all things American. America.

Where the line items that qualify for participation include

1) Warm Body, and 2) Able to throw a loaded die.

Just then the barefaced, double butterbar lieutenant

marches from the bivouac of a coach’s office

to a know-nothing airman planted at attention

beneath the free throw line. The way he exchanges salutes

of diplomatic importance, recites phonetically, de rigueur

from an index card as if each word were a sharp-edged stone

tumbled, slicing at the thin flesh in his mouth:

Como fway to entry nameento? It’s not me there at all,

but a boy, or a body-double who does not hesitate, says Si

just as the keys to a medic’s humvee and all its bastard

line-and-tackle plop into his outstretched hand. Tylenol.

Cases of Gatorade’s yellow electrolyte gruel

we dare not ask whose hands on what assembly line

in which Latin-speaking country have filled and capped.

A backboard projecting from the canvas window,

and he- newly-christened honorary phd in guardship,

Grand Poo-bah of Sonora’s mesas - is the one charged

with stitching together all the dotted lines.

Jonathan Travelstead served in the Air Force National Guard for six years as a firefighter and currently works as a full-time firefighter for the city of Murphysboro. Having finished his MFA at Southern Illinois University of Carbondale, he now works on an old dirt-bike he hopes will one day get him to the salt flats of Bolivia. He has published work in The Iowa Review and on Poetrydaily.com among others, and his first collection How We Bury Our Dead by Cobalt/Thumbnail Press is forthcoming in February, 2015.

GUERNICA

by Martin Willitts Jr.

    
    1.

Suddenness is our nature.
Once there was a village;
now there is not.

Once in the Basque Country village
in northern Spain,
love was tuned like a guitar;
now there is no music
ripped hearts of sheet music
no one heard.

Once someone was sleeping
peaceful as grapes waiting for harvest;
then abruptly, without warning,
they were harvested.

Once the houses were quiet;
then they were quieted.

    2.

The men were gone at the time.
The village was mostly women,
and children no bigger than a coin.
There was a building of stored weapons
on the edge of town,
spared during the attack.
This was not about politics,
or who was right, or war.
It was all about intimidation.

All the petty reasons did not apply.
They never do.
The only thing that mattered
was efficiency and expediency.
All that mattered was the quickness,
the shutting of doors,
churning blood passive.

Do not look at the child broken like a doll.
Look at how quickly everything was resolved.
Do not think of it as mean-spirited.
Think of it as progress.
In fact, according to everyone,
do not think of it at all.

Someone says, this does not happen anymore.
I wonder, if they follow the news
or hide their heads in the sand like ostriches.
How self-important and civilized they must feel.

I wonder if they would change their minds
if they were minding their own business
and a drone unexpectedly attacked.

Once there was a village,
a child crossing the street to somewhere,
not doing anything suspicious,
not whistling, not thinking anything terrifying;
then swiftly,
they were not there,
a black smudge,
nothing important,
nothing to write home about.

    3.

All wars are the same war.
No one remembers what caused them;
Collective Forgetfulness.
One minute, someone is eating a sandwich,
the next minute,
someone is killed for eating a sandwich.

All causes of the war are always unexplainable.
Anyone who justifies them
does not remember the pain caused by war.
Collective Disassociation.

Afterwards, the victor gets to write history.
Afterwards, the losers are treated as sore losers.

All dead soldiers are dead regardless of sides.
All wounded make us turn away,
denying we saw anything.
Collective Blindness, Deafness, See-No-Evil.

Someone once challenged me,
if you were in a war you would protect yourself.
I was in a war and I did not protect myself;
I was too busy being a Medic
holding the pieces of bodies,
jigsaw pieces,
wondering what went where.

4.

Someone asked me,
which war I were you in?
Does it matter?
All wars blend into all wars.
All people killed in a war
can look like put through a blender.

Why doesn’t anyone ask me,
what does peace look like?
I have a vision of it.

Instead they want to know,
where were you?
what was the weather like?
They never want to hear,
it was cloudy
with a chance of dying.

Once, there was a village
whose importance was blown up
by bombs
and when they were done
mopping up
nothing remained
permanent.


Martin Willitts, Jr. has had publications in Big City Lit, Rattle, Pebble Lake Review, Hurricane Blues (anthology), Hotmetalpress.net, Haigaonline, Bent Pin, 5th Gear, Slow Trains, Primal Sanities (anthology) and others. He has a print chapbook Falling In and Out of Love (Pudding House Publications, 2005), an online chapbook Farewell--the journey now begins on www.languageandculture.net 2006, in archives), a full length book of poems with his art The Secret Language of the Universe (March Street Press, 2006), print chapbook Lowering Nets of Light (Pudding House Publications, 2007), online chapbook News from the Front, edited a poetry anthology about cancer, Alternatives to Surrender (Plain View Press, 2007), and an online chapbook of haiku with his artwork, Words & Paper.