PAMELA HART

(This feature is part of TRUCK’s Theme Issue on the List or Catalog Poem. You can go HERE for an Index of the Participating Poets.)

3 POEMS

Praise Song

A morning prayer

to body armor and weapons

all that keeps you safe

the drill sergeant and the bullet

interpreter and phrase book

To MREs and rocket launchers

also the forward operating

base and your radio operator

I want to praise the desert

and its mountains falling

into rivers wide nights

vast stars a moon or two

To helicopter pilots and soldiers

who donate blood the medic

and tourniquet

dog tags and helmet

I sing of your boots caked

in clay rough with hours

of the IED you don’t step

on and the dog who finds it

The specialist and sniper

tip of the spear and rear guard

To Tajik Pashtun Hazara

an anthem to women in nearby villages

that they will be wild with fury

To your smile and your instinct

A praise song to next month and next

each one that brings you home alive

The Heaviest Burden is an Empty Pocket

                        Hebrew proverb

The blue rock shell fragment

Tic-tac, pen paper clip

Shape of your pocket filled

with hair band, tooth pick pistol

The weight of cell phone, note

pad and heavy ideas

Remember the one about how you looked

at water running over a rock

for so long it became real

There’s room for faces

the muggy mouth from before you were born

Brow over blue eyes like a photograph’s torn edges

The pocket’s worn smile found

by the roadside the night you lost your way

Poke the pouch of your life

to overflowing – jacket or jean

Any small area different

from its surroundings

Pocket a memory, veto

knife or some cash

Think of Venus and sad Pluto

the smell of desert sage

Shape it till there’s no room

for anything but emptiness

Tito’s Cadillac

You rock star mick-jaggering across the canvas

            out of the boulevards of Belgrade, that swash

 buckle blue weaving through narrow streets

            you Eisenhower-power-tripping gift

your engine glowering, your Charlie Sheen

            isms spit-firing from the grill

“the hieroglyphic is earthworm” you rant

            your Eldorado blue not to be messed with

because you’re the Marshall’s lagoon of peace

            lapping at the shores of Zagreb

Your steel – an old lightning charging through crowds

            in Tahrir Square

asking about free will and radiance

            Charlie’s lexicons raining on their parade

Drive on you said but it was late

            the boss golfing on some archipelago

The shine on your hood, baby, that’s museum

            wax, while the tourist who nicked your mirror

heard nostalgia in a song, said, is it

            some here-we-go-again tune

Scratch this scar tissue    remember the car

            knows about return