Evidence Markers Next to Blast Debris

Flash-of-blast.
Mere chance ——
sense of denial
negates the gut
feeling-of-a-gun.
Suicide vest in
a crowd. I am
arbitrary behind
a wall within
blast radius. Yet,
it noticed me.

ξ

Of the Blood

Owens, whose hands act steadier
than any of ours as we practice —— I now
puncture the IV catheter through
his vein, into muscle —— reaches,
sticks himself to demonstrate.
He, who recovered from heroin
not six months before enlisting.

ξ

Incidental Observation From a UH-60 Black Hawk

—— landing under mortar fire, we divert
elsewhere, holding a flight pattern
among swathes of undifferentiated aridness.
Beneath us —— sand berms, irrigation trenches,
cusped vehicle tracks —— tactile human geography.
Our translator turns two fingers toward his eyes
     then motions for us to look farther out ——
          he splays his hand forward, as if imitating
               the Euphrates.

ξ

Jordan Keller-Martinez is a US Army Veteran and holds the Junior Fellowship in Poetry at Washington University in St. Louis, where he received his MFA. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Poetry Magazine, The Adroit Journal, Colorado Review, and elsewhere.