Robert Bohm

YEARS AFTER BEING STATIONED IN MUNICH


One war is stories in uncles’ mouth,
another is differently arranged syllables
in my own at the American Legion bar on Sunday afternoon.
Lunging off-tackle, the fullback cuts left
into an opening no one else knows is there.
The opening, almost as small as a bullet hole
in a dead grunt’s head, traps
the fullback, his hips
unable to squeeze through. Hassan
once tried to break free like that, obsessed with pulling
mosques through doorways
even pianos couldn’t fit through.
Sometimes when he prayed
as I grew older, I hid in the background, begging
Allah and Jehovah for a toke of grass.
The fullback gets up slowly
as we all make comments at the bar.
The talk grows louder,
an inch of snow has fallen, it looks like Munich
a few days after I was married there,
an army private
who didn’t yet realize
Hassan was the enemy, the one to be killed.

Robert Bohm is a poet and culture writer. He was born in Queens, New York. His 2007 Uz Um War Moan Ode is available from Pudding House Press. Other credits include two other books, a chapbook and work published in a variety of print and online publications. More information on Bohm's work can be found at his blog, Lethal Injections for the Conditioned Mind, and his website, Unburials: The Writer as Graverobber. Click here for a selection of online publications from the last few years.