Do you remember the Gulf War?
Do you remember what it looked like on TV?
Flashes of bright green across a dull green background.
Scud. Rockets.
More abstract than Super Mario Brothers.
A classmate’s brother wrote home,
we’re living in a palace these days, sleeping on marble floors.
I imagined a floor made of thousands of marbles,
thought how uncomfortable that would be.
The whims of kings are inscrutable, I guess.
That was the year I watched Ken Burns’ Civil War on a loop.
I loved the pictures of battlefields before and after,
peaceful then pockmarked and perfectly decrepit.
I loved how Gettysburg was saved by a textbook every time.
That was also the year someone cooked meat in strychnine
and threw it to dogs all over town.
First they’d foam at the mouth,
then shudder, then die.
It happened to my dog.
I saw it.
She was a birthday present, and I used to wake up early
to feed her puppy chow softened in hot milk.
I warmed it up in the microwave
and went out to the little garden shed where she slept.
This is the order of things.
First one thing, and then the other.
It’s taken me a long time to understand this.