Boneless by Jeremy Nathan Marks

In Laos

Southeast Asia

there is still unexploded

ordnance from a little war

called Vietnam

Every year it takes someone’s limbs

In Belgium and France

farmers find similar remnants

in their John Barleycorn fields

and among the tulips

Centenarian explosives from one

of their innumerable imperial spats

That’s Asia and That’s Old Europe

where history is part of their religion

where Buddha and the Village

Green Preservation Society block progress

but here in Canada and the US

There was/is Tulsa and Kamloops

When I put my shovel to Earth to pave

the way for a new subdivision, lube joint

or man cave what will I recover?

In the schools

our past isn’t supposed

to have any bones

it is monuments made of marble

and shaped like phalluses and breasts

Tourists take pictures and make social media

posts while their kids whisper and snicker

at dirty jokes

Because the past is Lady Liberty’s or Queen

Victoria’s buxom chest

tissues and organs of appetite and intention

But boneless.

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Jeremy Nathan Marks lives in Canada. Recent poetry and prose appears/is appearing in New Reader Magazine, Every Day Fiction, Unlikely Stories, Bluepepper, 365 Tomorrows, Dissident Voice, Jewish Literary Journal, The Journal of Expressive Writing, Boog City, Chiron Review, New Verse News, and Ginosko Review.