It’s 2AM and the War’s Still On
In the bedroom, a mosquito
whining like a clutch,
the one my first girlfriend burnt
out when I tried teaching her
this new motion: lifting
from the left thigh, slow,
until you topple into gear and turn
the wheel. It was never going to work.
I believed in love, she was English.
But that August, her hair
swept sweat from her pale neck
to the dash when she shook
her head, laughing, ripping
the transmission as it whined
like a mosquito in the bedroom,
where when she left me
I sat talking to a friend out in Iraq
a while. I said my heart hurt
and my car was fucked.
He said when you shoot someone
at night, they fall into a hole
shaped like a body. The hole
leaks darkness across the sand.
The darkness smells
like a clutch burning, like the inside
of your skull when you lash out
at the last place you heard
a mosquito’s whining stop
and lay an open hand
across your own jaw.
Joshua Myers is halfway through his MFA at Southern Illinois University, where he teaches technical writing and writes poems. He’s from Heidelberg, Germany.