I want to just keep on smearing butter
& jam on toast with a blunt knife
and licking foam from my espresso cup,
while listening to Lizzy and Tricia practice French,
but I’m a realist. Even the songbirds have levels
of mercury in their blood and feathers. Somewhere,
in the brightness against a wall, a soldier crouches—
sand in his hair, juices dripping from his body.
Here there is joy, like a hole with greenness coming
out of it, but there night pushes against the cylinder
of his gun. He probably has a knife too, in the presence
of the incomprehensible, thrusting his belly
to the ground, feeling the strangeness throb in his blood
as he touches the scope to his cheek.