Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting
by Kevin C. Powers
I tell her I love her like not killing
or ten minutes of sleep
beneath the low rooftop wall
on which my rifle rests.
I tell her in a letter that will stink,
when she opens it,
of bolt oil and burned powder
and the things it says.
I tell her how Pvt. Bartle says, offhand,
that war is just us
making little pieces of metal
pass through each other.
Source: Poetry (February 2009).
Kevin C. Powers is a poet, writer, and veteran of the Iraq war.
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