James Lineberger

UNTO THE BREECH SOME MORE

at first they gave us
some really great targets
and don’t you
believe what they say about no body counts
bodies count and we were

piling them up bro
and all of a sudden instead of
dry rations from
that damn place in sioux city
we were sitting squatlegged in a bombed
out but regular kind of house
it used to be

and women without their faces
covered were bringing in course after
course
of some weird but really delicious stuff and how
they got hold of meat and whatever
i’ll never know but
they were trying to apologize because at first none of them
thought this laser shit would work
until

the first kill
and then their mouths fell open like we had just
fell from the sky in a flat dive
with our
wings spread wide landing here without a chute or anything
to guide us just
some kind of mumbo-jumbo
with scopes and voices
crackling on the radios and then silence until
suddenly the f-16’s came screaming in to shoot their wad and oh god
old men were hugging me
and slobbering all over me and it was like they taught us
at benning like we wouldn’t ever
have a vietnam again
like emissaries come to set up a new church

like yesterday
they brought in gold and rare spices and all kinds
of electronic gear they’d had
stowed away and one of them gave me his digital camera
and introduced me to this little girl he said
was his sister who was in love with me and would let me do anything
i ever dreamed of if only

the next run we point the planes at those
scumbags down the road
that claimed they were just another war lord and his big family
but really anybody
could tell they were taliban the fucks and fuck the taliban
waste them

and then we go in and take it all
share and share once more
because as your king the bush has written they try to escape
we are over
their dead bodies

Location:	Hell's Half Acre, North Carolina
Email:	jdline@vnet.net
Publications:	Stirring, etc.

- March 2002 - Dear Anna Sonnets in a Land of Prose Calling The Minnows Oxford Blue Ficus Aurea Playing it Back what we will plant unto the breech some more Ars Poetica Elegy For My Mother Standing Under a Street Lamp on the Corner of Brice Court Escaping the terrible fish Sadie song for stephanie it will always be the season of famine somewhere Adieu - John Turner's Best Of - the disgruntled women's chorus sings accompaniment on the beta male blues How to Build an Impossible Staircase Trying to Raise the Dead How to Kiss The Grassfires of the Resistance Rishikesh