just this: a soft brown
linen shirt
crushed in sinuous dust. no sign
of anyone hurt. just this:
flat on its back, just
looking up; it looks
the sacrificial victim, except
no "looking," no "look."
a shirt: no arms throat lungs, no
heart — the fabric's all,
softening into the
contextlessness
of a loose and somehow rising
dust, except
the dust, of course, inert.
and not
a uniform. no
bare-chested soldier bathing below
our angle of vision.
it's a still shot. still,
something here insists
on war. images do that,
drag in their own
tangle of barbed wire, off,
out of sight,
and blood, rained away
several nights back.
no birds. you can hear them
not singing. no one coming.
no one here. just
this: a short-sleeved linen shirt,
dropped from another time, buttoned
to the top, and thinning into
dirt.
Marjorie Stelmach