Dax

Because some the fire chooses, and it chose me.
My father flies through the glass
and his head opens on the road
but the carseat melts and holds me
like an insect by the wings
and, Lord, I tear from my back and run,
through the corn that smears off my ear,
through the blur of a hawk’s shadow sailing
towards the farmer on his porch,
the girl screaming into her hand.
Then the hawk grows blades and
becomes a helicopter
and I’m holding the stump of
my lieutenant’s hand again,
my boots sooted with his skin,
his knees swinging blindly like antennae,
eyes boiled down to their stems
as we lift from the stream below,
the field littered with dead gooks—
Lord, I’ve seen how fire licks a man clean.
Fuck. Fuck.
The farmer’s daughter stops screaming
as my teeth chatter to form not my last words but my first:
Sir, for mercy, sir, help me.
Oh, Lord, mister. Go get your gun.