Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting

I tell her I love her like not killing   

or ten minutes of sleep   

beneath the low rooftop wall   

on which my rifle rests.   

I tell her in a letter that will stink,   

when she opens it,   

of bolt oil and burned powder   

and the things it says.   

I tell her how Pvt. Bartle says, offhand,   

that war is just us   

making little pieces of metal   

pass through each other.

--Kevin Powers

People are calling Powers the first great poet to emerge from our recent wars.