Two Taliban brothers huddle in a hand-scraped trench. They fire pot shots
at a passing convoy of eight trucks, plated and squat armadillos. The bullets
ping off their metal brows to land on hillsides that bloom
with white flowers and landmines.
American soldiers soften the trench with fourteen Hellfire missiles
Then drop sixty-seven five hundred pound bombs.
The barrage carves a deep wound in the earth. The brothers
are smashed from people to parts to chunks to bits to mist.
Their particles cling to the dust and rain on the crater’s shores.
Merged with the earth and each other the brothers
become a disembodied voice that wails over Bomb Lake.
For generations, the dirge echoes in the ears of crippled children,
who gather by the water’s edge to fly kites and dangle their stumps.