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 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