Devon Balwit
The Lessons of Dunkirk (The Movie)
Your fingers may plug the slug holes
of a gun, but the culverts of flesh, no,
the heart’s a right river through those.
Tea warms a lad, and toast and jam, a lady’s
lilt offering, but torpedoes sod all, sending
the lungs brimming beyond the saucer’s edge.
A man will do anything to live, lie, knock
down the weak, shatter glass with a gun butt, run
the dying a long way to escape their shadow.
Aloft, you can hear little, just propeller whir
and the rat-a-tat-tat of the turret gun, and
the sudden silence when the tank empties.
A general’s job is to stand at the edge and cut
a fine figure. He squints the compass rose, a
focus of glass, brave faced to the last, the last lad.
Devon Balwit is a writer/teacher from Portland, Oregon. Her poems of protest have appeared previously in What Rough Beast as well as in The New Verse News, Poets Reading the News, Rattle, Redbird Weekly Reads, Rise-Up Review, Rat’s Ass Review, The Rising Phoenix Review, Mobius, and more.
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