(First posted in November of 2017, “this” revision includes an excerpt from Larry Heinemann’s novel…)
God’s Marvellous Plan.
Our man Paco, not dead but sure as shit should be,
lies flat on his back and wide to the sky,
with slashing lacerations,
big watery burn blisters,
and broken, splintered, ruined legs.
He wallows in this greasy, silken muck that covers him
and everything else for a stone’s throw and dries to a stinking sandy crust.
He lies there that night and all the next day,
the next night and half the second day,
with his heels hooked on a gnarled, charred,
nearly fire-hardened vine root; immobile.
And he comes to consciousness in the dark of that first long night
with a heavy dew already soaked through the rags of his clothes,
and he doesn’t know what hit him.
Am I ever fucked up, he thinks to himself,
but he doesn’t so much say this or even think it as he imagines looking down at his own body,
seeing – vividly – every gaping shrapnel nick,
every pucker burn scar,
every splintery compound fracture.
And at first he encounters his whole considerable attention on listening –
for the cries, the hoarse, gulped breathing,
the whispering supplication of the other wounded,
for water,
for Jigs the medic,
for God’s simple mercy.
(Swear to God, James, you have not heard anything in this life
until you have heard small clear voices in the dark of night calling distinctly, “Help me, please” –
though they say the crying of wounded horses is worse.
Paco waits with closed eyes and stilled breath,
to shiver and be appalled at the dry raspy voices;
waits patiently to whisper back in answer.
But he hears, of course, nothing.
(pp. 18-19)
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Paul Bacon’s cover art
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Larry Heinemann