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back KATE GASKIN
Operations Suite
I let myself believe
we had retired your desert
flight suit, shipped it, chastened,
back to 2006 when your plane
was a neon thundering that split
the tropopause
~
in two. Those first few
weeks without you, the baby’s
black eyes staring up
from the crook of my arm
while snow fell through
the elms. I too
~
am distrustful of any group
in lockstep—large
manipulations of starlings,
formations of them
on the parade
ground, reveille, reveille, and yet
~
if a plane is just a rib cage falling,
then a man is just a rib cage begging
~
over Kandahar. Your voice
tinny and small, ricocheting
off glinting satellites
back to me. In those days,
I could never drink so much
as a whiskey without trying
to replace myself entirely
~
with anotherkindof woman
onewho wouldn’twait
~
for you through thunder
that growled
from the margins of the woods
as I stood
ankle-deep in a flood,
the doves promising your return
like clockwork
back to the bougainvillea
each spring. You can
~
lie to me this time—say
you’ll stay. Hindu Kush
rising from the horizon
like rows of frozen teeth.
Delta, Echo, Alpha, Romeo
Operations Suite
Poem in Which My Husband Deploys and Our Baby and I Move Back In with My Parents