The Burn Pit Detail at FOB Cobra
We stand in the Humvee’s steel bed
and heave bags of trash
with both hands
to the wide crater below.
We throw piles of opened
boxes sent from our mothers,
the USO. We push out
the bent, rotting lumber
left too long
in the sun. We toss the torn
tires of Humvees, the sandbags
that split in half—we burn
everything, and we stand
beside the blue smoke
of our war’s leftovers. After
the bed’s empty,
we light cigarettes,
watch outside the wire:
three hundred meters out,
past the four rolls of concertina wire
in a wide field of desert,
two of the stray dogs fight.
They jump to their hinds,
mouths wide
for each other, but between the flashes
of burn pit smoke, they seem to be
in a dance, a moment
before a kiss, though just when their lips
could meet, the pit glows, the smoke
thickens—we can only see
their long shadows collide, fall.
At dawn, we’ll send a detail
to gather the dog who lost.
With snow shovels, they’ll scoop
the body into a double plastic bag.
To keep the dog
from becoming a bomb,
like everything,
they’ll dump it to the flame
and ash of the pit. 
The Burn Pit Detail at FOB Cobra
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