Bell

Looks like yesterday's rant over Scooter Libby's commuting generated a lot of visits to Against Oblivion. It also started a pretty good conversation at Tallow and Glue, my blog for Lawrence.com. Feel free to jump in.

A stunning poem by Marvin Bell called "The Method" is up today at Verse Daily. Read it. It's from Bell's new book Mars Being Red.

Here's another stunner. This one from Rampant, Bell's previous book.


A Lesson from the Corps

When you find the body, it has cauliflower ears.
It stinks of dead worms, the blood crumbles between your fingers.
When you find the body, the sleeves of the combat fatigues are in shreds.
Its face is puce, its torso black and blue, it's guts purple, but the teeth still gleam,

and the bones will shine up when cleaned.

Your saliva congeals, you taste dried paste.
Later, you may feel shame for noticing the colors or hating the smell.
You were schooled to do this.
To yank the dog tag off with a snap.
You were trained not to answer back to the silence.
There is a hiss as you compel the metal tag between the teeth.

This day may become a whiteout, a glare, a deficit in memory.
A place too barren even for a shriek.
A picture that didn't develop, just a clear negative.
For nothing recorded the thump of the bullet as it hit, or the webbing wet inside his

helmet liner, or the echoing within the helmet itself.

But you may think you remember the shudder you didn't see when he died.
You may imagine the last word, the mouth before the lingering stare.
The machinery of his broken chest may appear in dreams.
You may see the eyes, and hear the last expulsion of air.
He is the vault now for your questions to God.
Only the dead can tell you the distance from here to there.

Marvin Bell
from Rampant