I heard Brian Turner being interviwed on radio recently about his book of poems from the Iraq war, he read out this one -

Here, Bullet

If a body is what you want,
then here is bone and gristle and flesh.
Here is the clavicle-snapped wish,
the aorta's opened valves, the leap
thought makes at the synaptic gap.
Here is the adrenaline rush you crave,
that inexorable flight, that insane puncture
into heat and blood. And I dare you to finish
what you've started. Because here, Bullet,
here is where I complete the word you bring
hissing through the air, here is where I moan
the barrel's cold esophagus, triggering
my tongue's explosives for the rifling I have
inside of me, each twist of the round
spun deeper, because here, Bullet,
here is where the world ends, every time.


"While in Iraq, I felt very isolated from the relevance of what felt like a prior life. All that existed was the here and now. That said, the novels of Tim O'Brien probably held the most resonance for me. The series of malaria-induced dream poems in Here, Bullet are certainly influenced by Going After Cacciato. Yusef Komunnyakaa's Dien Cai Dau was definitely in the back of my mind. Also, Whitman's care for the wounded may find its echoes in my own work. An anthology of Iraqi poetry (Iraqi Poetry Today) was very influential. Fadhil al-Azzawi, Abd al-Wahhab al-Bayyati, and Muzaffar al-Nawwab had particular impact. As a writer, I have a tendency to be overly musical and layered. I deliberately forced myself to write Here, Bullet in a more stripped-down, direct style—a choice I hoped would be honest to the events I was witnessing."