The things they carried were largely determined by necessity…. In addition to the three standard
weapons—the M-60, M-16, and M-79—they carried… whatever seemed appropriate as a means of
killing or staying alive. They carried catch-as-catch-can…. They carried ghosts. When dark came, they
would move out single file across the meadows and paddies…. They carried lice and ringworm and
leeches and paddy algae and various rots and molds. They carried the land itself… the soil—a powdery
orange-red dust…. They carried the sky…
They carried out “war as an extension of prose by other means”
They lugged Ledig’s soldier poem impaled ’n blown to smithereens
They carried signified & signifier as a wonderful sign from God
They haunt the dark & when they cut yr service they mean it, you sod
They carried ghosts low, host lice on ice appropriate to stayin’ alive
They bombarded da bards & said kill me now or later, no jive
They carried M&Ms weapons soiled in powdery orange-red dust
They mugged down in the tranny for a dire date selfie or bust
They carried ringworm in paddies as a means of killing
They sunk poetry in its non-standard tracks for chilling
They carried lots for rots & molds, bidden in their breeches
They hunted sweet-smelling hacks & snacked on their leeeches
They carried sky to land on the wrong side d’grass
They grossed out on algae singin’ it’s a gas-gas-gas
They carried Nam on the lamb & dodged drafts south to Alaska
They move out catchy as Ketchikan, rasslin’ Picabia’s half-baked pasta
They carried single file “war as never having to say you’re sorry”
They took off when 4chan rivalry made it ah so hunky-dory
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Stephen Bett
Notes
The opening & closing stanza quotes are from Charles Bernstein’s “War Stories” (see Broken Glosa, p. 17)
Taken from Novel Lines 101: 101 alphabetical poems. Through 101 novels and metafictions, each poem in this collection riffs, literally, on its subject texts’ opening line(s)
An innovative, sassy, but deadly and pointedly serious tour through late 20th and early 21st centuries’ fiction from the Americas and from Western, Central and Eastern Europe. A mash-up of signifiers and signifieds, numerological flakiness, and PoWorld’s bland, Mega-church hegemonies—all encountering, in the midst of our present day cocktail-hour capitalism, some of the truly great novelists of our times.
Website: StephenBett.com
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Great piece of writing 🙂👍
Comment by Malcolm Paul on 20 May, 2025 at 5:33 am