Baghdad

A poem by Rachel Vogel | Originally published in The Dos Passos Review | Fall 2008

Later published in The Madison Review | Fall 2009

When the first bombs fell, dropping on

targets as tiny as pinpricks, success

a promised thing, like a tax refund,

we were drinking gimlets on Lettie’s balcony,

celebrating the freedom of her last child

packing off. The evening sky rolled out 

like pie dough. In the street below, a gang of

neighborhood boys kicked a Coke can around

the asphalt, the tinny racket so insistent we

stopped noticing it after a while, didn’t think much 

when one boy drew blood from another, and

a cop car drove by, scattering the fighters to the

night. It took months of wrapped, hot metal and

frayed limbs drenching our television screens like sweat

after a long, strong fuck to discover that we had no

appetite for war.