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shrapnel smiles
Animals stagger forward single-file like men
The ones that remained whole haven’t remained but
The soldiers walk away as if they could walk away without
Shrapnel in their feet, without
Bullets webbed in their finger pads, without
Gasoline drenched between chapped lips
Hands clutch rifles they
Have not yet learned how to let go and
They do not know they will need them
When they find themselves on a lanterned street with
Nobody around but the resounding echo of a
Laugh, or maybe a scream
It ended 3 years ago but it didn’t, did it?
They brought peace as if they could
They walk past bloodied kids’ sandals
Even the wind is trying to push them away until
The men draw close, to giggle and to gut
As if they could walk away without
Stopping to see if any of the children will speak
They won’t
They don’t come out anymore
Not that it matters
The soldiers don’t speak either
They walk away from the twisted metal carcass
Overturned god dead on the floor
They walk away from it all as if they could
As if there wasn’t metal
Lining their streets and their roofs and their mouths
Between their ears, buried in their eye sockets
They feast on mustard gas and tangled tendons and
Skulls split by cowering wings
As if they could fly away from the mouths like gashes
See the sprawled limbs of dead men from above for a change
They don’t taste the blood seeping into their teeth
All they know is burned flesh, anyway
When the spring comes they walk away as if they could
But the winter was not cold enough to deserve the creeping flowers
Who laugh at the men, groaning around the thick guilt stuck in their scarred throats
Who glance at the animals as they crawl towards a home
They have left behind
Amid the seared hands and the low screams of those who have not been granted
The kindness of a swift death
Or the bliss of a false hope
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“shrapnel smiles” is meant to represent the short-term and long-term effects of war on its soldiers and victims. The repeated phrase “they walk away as if they could” is a reference to PTSD and the way that fighting is trailed back on boots from the battlefields. It provides the commentary that war is unavoidable and ever-present, even though we strive for “peace” (as mentioned in the second stanza). Medical and technological advancements created for combat are also employed in daily life, which is why the fifth stanza alludes to lingering metal and twisted carcasses of planes, cars, etc. These mechanisms are referred to as gods because technology was seen to be the best of society even though it was used to do the worst things imaginable. As said by Henry Emerson Fosdick, “the tragedy of war is that it uses man’s best to do men’s worst.”
Bloody imagery is used to contrast a horrifying mood and apathetic tone, a juxtaposition that creates an ironic paradigm. This indifference towards human suffering, recognizing evil but not condemning it, is a tribute to the themes of standardized apathy towards death in Richard Connell’s short story “The Most Dangerous Game” (1924). The mood is hopeless, destroying the naïve belief that humanity is ultimately good, but it is not an atonement of sin. If anything, it urges that sin is what defines humanity, especially in an obliterated post-war world.
The format is loosely based off of the poem “The Waste Land” by T. S. Eliot, which also features capitalized letters and fragmented sentences that spill between lines. The capitalization at the beginning of every line shows the need for the strict organization and standardization that soldiers were so used to at the time, but clauses are split between stanzas and there are no complete sentences like the disarray of a shell-shocked mind. The narrator is stumbling through, providing broken imagery and trying to make sense of this new world that appears so distorted to them and to all. The general pronoun “they” allows for ambiguous identities. Derealization, depersonalization, and a complete disconnect with the world are emphasized through both tone and mood.