A Photographer With A Ba Joins The Army Poem by Stevie Edwards

Because he fell in love with the word unbearable.
Because he loathed shooting portraits of wrinkled
baby heads. Because of drinking
bad Michigan wine in his parents' basement,
chanting California, California,
California—a restless prayer.
Can I blame him for having no magic
diamonding his dead carbon
drone? For years he's punched
everything in his body, called this
event of bruised kinetics breaking,
freaking himself into a windmill—
glory blades for limbs. God,
he could spin himself new—
I've seen it. When he said Army,
I didn't ask why. And there was silence
jumping out the car window,
jettisoned prayers. Nobody said
killing. Nobody said combat
licking his ear at night. Should I
mention it's Christmas and the man's
my chosen family? If I say this
never happened, then does it
not happen for the narrator
ogling this story? If I say
please? If I say it again with
quietude, a deep hush that
quivers like a body in a bath towel
rioting, no reveling, in the cold
ripe morning? If I don't speak?
Squad Designated Marksman, the steadiest
shot: he's learning to guide bullets into
targets a kilometer away. When I said
unbearable in the first line I meant
visualizing the targets as boys
with no shoes—I meant years of
Xanax and night terrors. There is
zero-order to this poem. Reader, please
zoom back to the car and say blood.