from The Philadelphia Inquirer

New Safeguards for Warplanes

this one is too easy, with the irony
almost a doublethink kind of thing

the accidental strafing of a school by an F-16

cut & paste: Little Egg Harbor Township, NJ
for somewhere East of Jerusalem
or South of our Southern border

the definition stands: war is over there

like an arrow that points
only in one direction

far enough away
that the victims are nameless

we've lost the language for our own misfortunes
b/c we won't talk about theirs
when framing the terror of 27 20mm rounds ripping
 indiscriminately through the chill evening air
or speaking of warplanes and the safety of civilian populations



Aaron Couch is the Poetry Editor for Xconnect magazine (http://www.xconnect.org).