Corpses

 

            Outside Kuwait City (1991)

We came upon them mid-day,

in a rush for shelter from the petrol rain──

three corpses upright in an armored personnel carrier,

as crisp as dime-store cigars.

Oil fires illuminated a blast zone surrounding the vehicle,

casting a perverse half-light

over the living and dead.

Some Marines took photos with the corpses──

souvenirs for the living back home.

I kept watch through the scorched, steel turret

and thought of my Grandfather lying embalmed

in a casket in Enid, Oklahoma.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I was sixteen when Grandpa died

and recalled him displayed like a wax mannequin

stuffed with ice and vinegar.

The mortician overdid Grandpa's makeup

which cracked like desert topsoil at his hairline.

I half-expected him to rise up

and scold the adults in the room

for displaying him that way.

The preacher's pontificating dragged on for eternity,

and I experienced a skepticism swelling in me

toward claims that the dead reanimate

in a celestial paradise

surrounded by childhood pets

and deceased loved ones.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Staring back at those unfortunate soldiers

trapped in a fiery death-box of American military might,

the poison rain hammered away

at our fragile notion of youth's invincibility.

Thunder from approaching artillery

rattled our momentary reprieve.

An offhanded sentiment 

from our most-junior squad member──

a boot private from Encinitas, California──

proved a more convincing eulogy

than Grandpa received.

"Sucks to be them," he said. 

**First published in As You Were literary magazine

and second-place winner of the 2023 Col. Darren L. Wright Memorial Writing Awards.

**Illustration by Morgane Xenos