by Jed Myers
“The Taliban...denied any involvement in this bombing.”
—Sami Yousafzai, May 31, 2017, in The Daily Beast
The truck was driven by someone,
a component of the contraption,
a conscious part whose last action
behind the wheel would rock the whole zone,
would rupture the German compound,
the flesh of American contractors
and Afghan guards, the dutiful anxious
animals our fellow humans there
on the ground blown closer to some
fate entertained in the driver’s blind
trust—what drove that believer
to such a faith? You think
I’m insulting someone’s religion? Is blame
a religion? I think it’s the wire
strung throughout the machine. And distance,
and strangeness—these are ingredients
in the volatile powder. Who,
besides the splattered soul at the wheel,
had a hand in the horror? I’ll stand
up and be counted. I bought
my kids the screen games that trained them
to shoot before they could think. I kept
my money in mineral rights and guns
with no insistence I be informed
by my mutual fund. I didn’t cross
the White House Lawn to stare at Barack
through his window while he signed the drone
order at breakfast. I didn’t mind
the price per gallon dropping again
while the Gulf turned a shade darker. Aren’t I
a person of interest? And you my friend
on the corner, or you at your wheel
letting a passenger step down off
the commuter bus, or you at your desktop
computer adjusting the payout that won’t
keep the old guy’s bypass from blowing him
bankrupt, or you on your cold call
selling the solo mother of two
the skin cream to win the role—aren’t you
a component? Each a part in that
instant blood-shine blast in Kabul.
Jed Myers lives in Seattle. He’s author of Watching the Perseids (Sacramento Poetry Center Book Award), The Marriage of Space and Time (MoonPath Press, forthcoming), and two chapbooks. Recent honors include the Prime Number Magazine Award for Poetry, The Southeast Review’s Gearhart Poetry Prize, and the McLellan Poetry Prize (UK). Recent poems can be found in Rattle, Poetry Northwest, Southern Poetry Review, The Greensboro Review, Natural Bridge, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Solstice, Canary, and elsewhere. He is Poetry Editor for the journal Bracken.