TV War

By Carl Watts

You know how they say it: First
there’s the engagement ring, Then
comes the wedding ring, and Then
finally comes TV War. Busts
taken aside to air grievances
at cameras fixed, not, speculate
as to crimes in heat. I mean, whichever
faction gets most from that action
seeming ominous, pulsing
points in industrial dark, foiling
bright sky-streaks belonging
to an aggrieved. Minor mines. I love
you. B-52 but reverse-engineered, black
cloud belching out its cloaca. Marry me,
it might say in swirling, curling
script. Cluster sentiments. Then we’ll have
an engagement. Pop-up weddings, last stands
of flowers left outside the refinery, photo
credit: UAV. Then, only then, after countless
such confrontations, might we finally conceive
of the third coming—the suffer-ring.

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Body War

By Carl Watts

​Unbecoming these days, uncouth
like a still-stretched lobe’s bayonet
through the ear-heart. Piercing cries
but mostly regarding rats, perhaps
dysentery. You have died of, etc. The
mystery being how they got all those
dudes to play hide-and-go-seek in
unbecoming jungle fatigues in any
first place! None of you
were there, so you don’t know
how hot the cult leader was in his wire
rims; those uncouth jeans. Reading so
impassioned—really, really reading. Some
go in the garbage for their gear, G-strings,
encamp among brothers wearing pants
from another’s yesteryear. Mothers.
Fucking begging to be drone-bombed,
longing for a stabbing that really goes
through for once, some flare that can really
reach the chest, some actual unbecoming. 

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The War

By Carl Watts

The whole problem with life
being for living is how
much liquor there is. I know
the people manning the defenses
during early stages of the war in
[country] knew that whiskey
would or would not get them
through. Out the other side
or salient or whichever toilet
I knew—listen to me, listener— 
truly, truly I knew.  

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​Carl Watts holds a PhD in English from Queen’s University and currently teaches at Huazhong University of Science and Technology, in mainland China. He has published two poetry chapbooks, Reissue (Frog Hollow, 2016) and Originals (Anstruther, 2020); a short monograph, Oblique Identity (Frog Hollow, 2019); and a book of essays, I Just Wrote This Five Minutes Ago (Gordon Hill, 2022).