In Country
In the Iraq edition of wartime for American soldiers, fear of being blown to pieces by hidden explosives frequently loses out to the wiliest enemy of all—boredom. This is the wartime footing—six years in an M1A1 Abrams tank—that Iraq War veteran Hugh Martin makes use of to create his own masterful poetry. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Grantland, and numerous other prestigious journals, and The Stick Soldiers, his first collection, won the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize.
Test Fire
—south of Jalawla
After we drive through
the barren hills
where the earth unrollsitself for miles, where the soil’s
as stale as boxed cookies
sent from the YoungstownUSO, the gunners fire
machineguns at the ridge
wall’s face—smalldust-explosions lift
to the sky like faded desert
larks while the rest of usshoot from our knees, our
chests, as copper casings
rain like loose changeacross the dirt, then
as we convoy back
to Cobra from nowherethe Bedouin come
to collect the shells
& stuff them in sacks& after they go: only
boot & footprints,
a careful cursive of tire-tracks.
Reviewed by
Matt Sutherland
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