“I beat the bottle but
I can’t beat the war”
after an acrylic on canvas
by Ron Mann
30 years after
the fact a lawnmower
two yards over
backfires and just
like that I’m back
in-country sucking
in lawn chemicals
instead of air,
all that fertilizer
for a mind on a
perpetual edge
recalling an agent
oranged dawn that
colors all the jungle
a dark unnatural
light like the hand
of death pressing down
the sharp, bladed
grass next to a
recently roto-tilled
garden plot, that
graveyard for lost
crops, plowed under
plants, dead soldiers
composted a dark,
rich loam thick with
earth worms fattened on
the rotting skins
of the dead
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