War Games

 
The Marines have a girl somewhere the whisper
circulates around the guard post at the checkpoint.
Have her in a basement in the town where
they are billeted.  They’ll let you have a go.
I watch the twin stars of headlights rotate
their spokes in pixilated night vision then
double back, drive away.  We wait—a girl--
There was a girl who sometimes brought
our translator food, her chin tucked deep to
her collarbone, never looking at me, a man
unknown to her.  It could be that girl.
 
My boots grind the gravel up to the house
where the Marines stand, joking.  They open
the door and let me walk alone to the basement
where she is, scuttled into a corner, naked
haunches up.  I crouch and crawl over
the way you do with a skittish cat, make
yourself smaller.  But she doesn’t see me.
Her mouth is smeared with bruises.  She is easy
to lift in a bundle, so small she tucks
in my jacket, somewhere in those bones
is a faint heart slowing.  The Marines
look away, drag their guns in the gravel.  Where
to go?  I want to walk with her into the desert
make a bed for her in an old boat, carry
her with me everywhere. I try my Arabic. House?
Father? Mother? Someone to take her
into that darkness.  Finally a woman points
me to a building near the minefield.  I pass the girl
to her father. We whisper back and forth
as she sleeps without understanding.  Our words little
freighters back and forth, hulls empty.
 
When I wake to shouting I run to the edge
of the minefield we ringed in barbed wire
strung with warnings about the landmines
and there that girl wandering on the field.
Bigs holds me back and she turns and looks
at all of us, tucks her chin down and rips
the dress slowly from the collar to the hem—bones,
bruises, a bandage black with blood--
all the while singing a little song quietly,
so quietly we hear the click.