This is How You Derail a Train: After Ernest Hemingway’s “Who Killed the Vets?”
Or August, if you must
When the earth is busy spinning itself off its axis,
And the president gives up fishing
Poor men will swallow violence and saltwater
By the mouthful
Soldiers to the last, they’ll go out together or
Not at all
With their eyes open
With their fists up
Knowing the smoldering began elsewhere
But ends with them
Bodies like the train that never left the coast
Put to rest by absent hands
Left in the ditch / In the mangroves
Next to the bloated woman who screams
Brine / And rust / And dead men
Who can’t scream / Who won’t ever scream
Again
So, you lie about the death toll
Let the sea and the scavengers play autopsy
Burn the bodies like you did their belongings months before
And if you finish the railroad, call it another act of God
That is how you derail a train / Or put out a fire
That is how you kill the veterans
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Brooke Tapia is pursuing a General Associates of Arts and plans to pursue a Baccalaureate of Arts in English and a minor in Creative Writing.