Five Poems by Noah Edgar

Bombed (in media res)

I starched the bill of my cover. My cover was blown
to fragments of mechanic speech. Piercing my ears
with slivers of metal. Back to books
with cracks of light. Mortar shells whistle

shatter and splinter. The body. A body hardly
identifiable once thinner. Then
thinner. Now skeletal
beneath the rubble.

I starched the bill of my cover. I think of clothing
as a form of camouflage. Back to books

with slivers of metal. I listen to metallic thwacks
in the dark. Cracks of light. Cupping my ears
to receive the music clearly. Those are pops-off a belt-fed.
That’s my blood echoing in the shell. Back to books
skeletal beneath the rubble.

After the war

I had meant to remain immiscible.
I had meant to retain the products of my environment
and flip them for a profit. My son bought a gun off the black market

after his son was killed off in the war. In his eulogy,
I had meant to make a joke about the war as spectacle
and the spectators respawned, silent

as a mirror. Stealthy as a suppressor. I had meant
to breadcrumb my language. No I meant to assimilate
my language and spew fragments around campus. Damn

I missed my target. But it’s sound.
Ripples from the shell. The intention
oceanic. I mean mortar. These lines are over-

cooked. I prefer mine bleeding. I mean to say
I take the bleeding seriously. I mean I sell tourniquets
to classrooms. I mean to say I prefer my audience bleeding.

Final Protective Fire

I must admit I kind of lost it back
Don’t go there. Heat humming off the sand.
Sand tracking or tracking sand through
the room through the screen. Is that what you

What you mean when you say Don’t
take this personally? Look, I pulled you
through the Polaroid. You pulled me
through the gun pit. Now stop it just

In your night-vision green dress. Crying about
About nothing. Come back to bed
while our bodies are still visible. Half-break
-ing into large mouths of gunfire.

Jamming, Spoofing, or Electronic Warfare

on the cot          I reread copies of Penthouse
                  the body           is my favorite color              the desert
                     in          night-vision green         my favorite
                                          color            is the body after a bullet
                                                 I have found           a language that      supports
                                   the gaze is the war           in              night-vision
                 green       if the gaze            supports the war
is it still                    pornography

Hangfire

together              on the firing line
                                                 yet crying in bed my wife
                                                                                  in pieces             my memory
                                                 coming together                I want to know
                                who I tore through             coming back to bed
               in pieces               embering my memory
in the beginning lingering
                 what are you     you waiting for
                                 the trigger           choking
                                                 sluggish                 is the faith I found
                                 bathetic and/or I’m disillusioned
                 my wife                turned over sluggish
before the trigger I



Noah Edgar is a (baby) poet, (former) machine gunner in the Marine Corps, and (soon to be) MFA student at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He currently lives in Lexington, KY, where he slings drinks and occasionally reads for various literary magazines. More of his work can be found in Reverie, Backwoods Literary Press’ Testament: A Rural Anthology, and elsewhere. You can also find him on Instagram @noah.edgar.