Portside

Grace in War
By Stacey Walker

When you first told me of a man trapped in a tank
on fire burning in war on Christmas, and how you
heard him scream, watched more men on fire release him
                                            to see, to smell flesh singe—
I cried for you,
for your guilt, and how you felt you too should have been
in there. And now when we fight, I think of him
and I want to light myself and immolate in our bed—
                                                               the damage
to your soul is done and words cannot sway you
                                            to my side of the sheets.
You move in action, your pillow a gun.
You told me once it was how you slept on your M16,
and how people steal guns out from under you, but yours
was tethered to your leg. They would have to take you
with them.                               But there is no tether here.
         I am in that tank with you now, and we
         are at war, but I am no soldier—
         have no tactical training, and I
         maneuver just on your words—
                         I can’t be in here
                        I need to breathe

I see you there blank and tender.
        You are the pull, the hard pull.
I see the moment your small incandescent fire
         hemorrhages.
Contact with you now is blood and a risk
         of blackened skin.

It is sacrifice.

I instinctively want to test your heat—I want
                               to reach to you on your side
                                        of the bed, but instead

                                                               I see the obliterated tanker
                                and the older language that predates me—
                     your history of wind, sand, guns. I move in
                     too close, too soon. I am not prepared
                     for this battle. I am not protected.
   My entire flesh exposed, my heart
   beats raw. I should have tied
   it down, but I do want to burn
   here, with you—to know
   how to cry for you again.

Stacey Walker is a lecturer at University of Missouri-St. Louis, Jefferson College, and St. Louis Community College. She has a B.A. from the University of Missouri-Columbia, and M.A. from Southeast Missouri State University, and an M.F.A. from the University of Missouri-St. Louis. She is the recent winner of the 2016 Boulevard Poetry Contest for Emerging Poets, and her writing explores themes of relationships and identity. She currently lives in St. Louis with her son and husband who was an infantryman in the Army for six years and served two tours in Iraq, one in 2003 and the other 2005, and she is currently working on a collection of poem entitled A Letter to the Universe.