Read More: A brief Q&A with Ben Weakley
I Meet Afghanistan Beside a Dirt Road Cut Into Mountain
Afghanistan appears as an old man with hazel eyes
sunken behind the furrowed skin of an almond face
marked by years of sun, work, and death.
I meet him in a village when he shuffles
toward the road, dragging the long tail of his dirty kameez
as he watches our caravan of painted steel
cages climb the mountain to Musa Khel.
This is what haunts me – he does not know
America. He has never met her,
this foreign woman come to make him new again.
The only white people he’s ever seen
were the Russians who disappeared from the earth
30 years before. No matter what we say
he believes we are Russians.
He knows nothing about the camps
in the eastern mountains, nothing about the foreigners
who lived there. He can tell me nothing
about towers or twisted I-beams, nothing
about airplanes or jet-fuel
blooming into an orange rose
of flame against a translucent sky.
This is what haunts me –
he is still there, in the village cut into rock
below Musa Khel, where we left him
ten years ago. I am gone but he remains.
Getting Left of the Boom
We are taught to hunt them like whitetail deer.
We study their habits, match their wanderings
to the cycle of the moon. We know what makes them
bed down and hide. We know what makes them cautious. […]
Subscribers can read the full version by logging in. |
No Take Backs
Afghanistan rides in across a pristine sky
like some bare-chested western god throwing
bolts of lightning, except this time he’s hurling
leftover rockets from Soviet days
until he slams one into a dusty path
on Forward Operating Base Salerno
and it bursts into a thousand fragments
where a twenty-five year old lieutenant—
the guy who runs the motor pool, […]
Subscribers can read the full version by logging in. |
Afghanistan Speaks About the War
Afghanistan sits on the corner
of a sweat-stained mattress
in a mud-brick hut, thatched together
with straw and goat-shit.
He combs a henna-stained beard
with leather-padded fingers and yellow nails
while the quiet boy fetches hot water
for tea. I ask him why the terrorists attack
from his village, why his young men
put bombs in the ground.
Afghanistan says,
Who knows the minds
of young men – you pass the time in your way,
they pass time in theirs,
and I will be here in my garden, waiting.
Subscribers can read all our publications by logging in. |
___________________________________
Ben Weakley spent fourteen years in the U.S. Army, beginning with deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan and finishing at a desk inside the Pentagon. He writes poetry and essays about the enduring nature of war and the human experience. Ben’s work appears in the anthologies, We Were Not Alone: a Community Building Art Works Anthology and Our Best War Stories by Middle West Press. Other poems and articles appear or are forthcoming in Cutleaf, The Wrath-Bearing Tree, The Ekphrastic Review, and Vita Brevis, among other publications. His awards include first place in 2021 Col. Darron L. Wright Memorial Writing Awards, and first prize in the 2019 Heroes’ Voices National Poetry Contest. Today, Ben lives in Northeast Tennessee with his wife, their two children, and one very mischievous hound dog. You can read more of Ben’s work at https://bit.ly/BenWeakley.
Read More: A brief Q&A with Ben Weakley