War Porno
published in Cutthroat
Bursts of fire pin him to a chalky column—
“Where the hell is backup!”—he drops and rolls,
spraying a clip of sparks from the nozzle
of his SAW, springs up quicker than “Salaam”
and slams on the modular grenade launcher,
when a flash from the roof drops him to one knee,
and in his mind’s slow-motion camera he sees
himself pirouetting down, squeezing the trigger,
the tiny globe of fire like Tinkerbell on acid
snaking across the courtyard, lifting the man
into a spray of crimson pixels. “You win!
Play again?” But his dad calls, “Hey, G. I. Kid,
come take a look at this. Check out these graphics.”
On Fox, digitally-enhanced satellite footage
of Biblical geography sweeps into soft-core coverage
of faceless collateral damage, then a soldier ecstatic
for the week’s first shower, his state-side parents—
“God bless!”—then back to the cannon’s-eye perspective
that keeps us rubber-necking for the next live
death, the real-time bullets, the correspondent’s
staticky play-by-play, then “over to you at the Pentagon.”
Hard to resist, this combo of lethal and techno-glitz.
“So real, it’s unbelievable.” With remotes and joy-sticks,
armchair patriots are winning our wars. Play again?
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