Laura Jaramillo
War Machine
Heat maps mark the movement of blood-bearing bodies
across desert sand
*
The operators open
their inter-
faces ribbed with fire tipped in
blood the men
pull over
to peak over
the side of
a ditch crew
cut and rosy
the men
disappointed
we’re not hurt
wanting to have
been heroes
or at least become
the one
holding
the terror and
force the fire and
percussive blow-
back the shrapnel
and tie cuffs the paper
work of modernity
the men perform
ICE
operations at
the Spahn Ranch
at Arivaca
at Tabernas
they’ll fake out
a frontier in the
desert of the real
If they have to
Abide by some basic
banality
to “serve”
then oil the contours
of their physiques
The one man
with such a Barbie
-like arc in
his tit/
pectoral
muscle the techno-
logical veil
pneumatic
virtually
weightless Kevlar
condemned to bear
the melancholy
of Robocop’s sensuous
pink lip the pilots
rip open
A breach in being
becoming war
gods in a sky
from which the
regular gods
have retracted
to rend the veil
of women only
to conceal
their own faces
so they may
never
witness themselves
being seen
by their marks
Laura Jaramillo is a poet from Queens and an unemployed Doctor of Literature specializing in film and media. She is the author of the full-length poetry collection Material Girl (subpress 2012) and many chapbooks. Her criticism and creative work have appeared in JumpCut, The Brooklyn Rail, and IndyWeek.