October 23, 2022

Matt Hohner

DRONE GOD

The video is silent. The bomb smaller than a trenching
tool. It falls to the ambient sounds of your home,
the neighbors’ children playing outside in the street,
autumn birds calling to each other in the trees.
The bomb, adorned in blue and gold stripes, shrinks
towards two men in a foxhole curled close like twins
in a womb, colored in the drab palette of battle, the hue
and shade of the soil that will consume their bodies.
You are God, or what’s replaced Him, above it, watching
the bomb descend like a terrible word from your mouth,
like spittle. The bomb blasts inches from the men’s knees.
Debris kicks up towards your face hovering over the scene.
Dust shakes loose in a cloud from the ground surrounding
them. As the smoke clears, one man drags himself
out by an arm, legs kicking, faltering. The other lurches
and rises, fumbling in concussed stupor. Your last glimpse
of the men is the moment the end of the first man’s
left arm blossoms bright red where his hand used to be.
Outside your window, children laugh and squeal on scooters,
on skateboards, on bicycles. Steam creaks in the warming radiators.
A breeze shakes leaves loose from the trees, showering the children
in confetti of gold, umber, auburn, crimson under a cloudless sky.
 

from Poets Respond
October 23, 2022

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Matt Hohner: “This poem responds to a tweet on October 19, 2022 by Kyiv Independent reporter Illia Ponomarenko, showing video of a drone’s-eye-view strike on a Russian position in Ukraine (video warning: graphic content). I’ve seen the term ‘God tier’ used in describing the Ukrainians’ use of drones in defense of their country. I’m not sure if it refers to the height from which their drones are operating, the point of view such a height offers, or the skill with which they have been using the drones with such deadly and effective results. How does one watch these brutal 30 seconds of video, just one tiny event in a tightly-contained, yet global war, then go about one’s day, without being changed?” (web)

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May 25, 2017

Matt Hohner

HOW TO UNPACK A BOMB VEST

Start with the vest itself, each pocket stuffed with scriptures
and explosives, hatred and nails, belief and batteries. No. Start
with prayer on Friday, or Saturday, or Sunday. No. Search
online for where the materials and the rhetoric were bought.
No. It’s at the hardware store, the mosque, the chatroom.
Begin with an olive tree, a way of life, a desert sky. First,
learn a language spoken for thousands of years. Learn its
words for forgiveness, for war, for love. Learn every word
for revenge spoken by anyone who has seen a drone. It is
scrawled in the concrete dust of Aleppo, in pockmarks across
the walls of Baghdad. The source bubbles up from the ground,
black, thick, pungent. Start with the forests of dinosaurs. No.
Start with the treasuries of the west. Look in your gas tanks
for the instructions on demilitarizing sleeveless tops. Drink
the poetry of nomads and scholars for a taste of old bloodlines
and darkness. Walk the back alleys of grievance in the shadows
of pyramids. Cover yourself with hijab and begin with apology.
It is there, in worn carpets and stained coffee cups, in bombed
out hospital wards and torture cells. Dig a hole six millennia
down through generations of soldiers’ bones and sacrifices
to God, deep in the cool earth between two ancient rivers,
and get in it. This is where you will find the directions
for grace written in carbon, written in breath, written
in songs whose lyrics the dead have long since forgotten.

from Poets Respond

[download audio]

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Matt Hohner: “In response to the apparent suicide bombing of a pop concert attended by mostly young women and girls in Manchester, England. I don’t know for certain what poetry’s role is in situations like this, other than pure self-expression. Perhaps through metaphor it builds bridges, knocks down walls, heals wounds. Regardless, it is how I use my voice, my weapon of choice.”

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