What He Says When I Ask Him How He’s Doing
The nice thing about the army,
he says, is that it ends.
When he talks about target
markets, I see guns, oiled
and packed in straw, ready
to ship. You can’t use
five gallons of gas to burn
down a building, he says.
You need more
than that. He means, I think,
you need a son who has been
taken from you or who has taken
himself away. You need a dog
that has died. A daughter
who hasn’t talked to you for years.
You need a love in your heart
that has been hurt. And then you need
the gas. The good thing about a fire,
he says, is that everyone loves
to watch it burn. They feed it
so that it goes on forever,
they love it so much it can never end.
he says, is that it ends.
When he talks about target
markets, I see guns, oiled
and packed in straw, ready
to ship. You can’t use
five gallons of gas to burn
down a building, he says.
You need more
than that. He means, I think,
you need a son who has been
taken from you or who has taken
himself away. You need a dog
that has died. A daughter
who hasn’t talked to you for years.
You need a love in your heart
that has been hurt. And then you need
the gas. The good thing about a fire,
he says, is that everyone loves
to watch it burn. They feed it
so that it goes on forever,
they love it so much it can never end.
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Chris McCannChris McCann's work has been published in Moss, Arc Poetry Magazine, Kissing Dynamite, Salt Hill Journal, Noctua Review, The Shore, and the Bodies anthology from Beaver Magazine. He lives on Bainbridge Island in Washington.
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