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Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting

By Kevin C. Powers Kevin C. Powers

I tell her I love her like not killing

or ten minutes of sleep

beneath the low rooftop wall

on which my rifle rests.

I tell her in a letter that will stink,

when she opens it,

of bolt oil and burned powder

and the things it says.

I tell her how Pvt. Bartle says, offhand,

that war is just us

making little pieces of metal

pass through each other.

Source: Poetry (February 2009).

Biography

Poet and novelist Kevin C. Powers was born and raised in Richmond, Virginia. He served with the US Army in Iraq from 2004 to 2005, where he saw combat as a machine gunner in Mosul and Tal Afar. Following his honorable discharge, he earned a BA at Virginia Commonwealth University and an MFA from the Michener Center at the University of Texas at Austin.

“Poetry has helped me order the world,” Powers said. The Michener Center . . .

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