Gideon's War: A Book Review Poem by Frank Avon

There's blood on every page.

They.

Someone is beheaded.
Someone's eye is screwed out.
Someone is shot in the belly.
Someone is short in the head
and pushed off the deck.
They
are riddled with AK-47's.
They are pierced with primitive spears.
They are crushed in a landslide,
a deliberate landslide.
They are bombed.
Their bodies are bloated,
blanketed with flies,
not maggots, not yet.

They. They. They.

It's all Abu Nasir
who is really Tillman Davis
who really isn't,

and his brother Gideon,
the prophet of peace,
the mediator, pacifier
who kills, and kills,
and kills.
He has to, doesn't he?

Or is it Uncle Earl,
or the CIA,
or the National Security Council,
or a blast-off senator,
or President Digges,
or the novelist himself?

Or us, his readers?

There's blood on every page.

They.