The Culler

The night Di’s Diamonds burnt down, a rock the size of a newborn’s fist lay in the ash for my Birdy. A few months back, my screaming son slipped out of Birdy onto the bed that moaned against the wall during his conception. He fit in my shoebox so not to roll away while I smeared up Birdy’s thighs with her mother’s sequined towels. Her mouth bled from a bit tongue, but the champ had chinned up and spat out our son. The diamond lived through fire for my Birdy, and her sweat earned her a jewel for every finger, but the ashes blessed me the once and it would do. Some time ago, Birdy told me she was mine forever as she fainted in my hands. No other boys choked her hard like I did, she said, and when she came her eyes flew. Her daddy must have done it first, the way she begged. She limped as if I killed her, but she squirmed alive and thanked me with this thing she did; it finished me every time.

Later, her angel face fucked me sane as I murdered brown boys for our nation’s glory. I said, they’d live again like Birdy did, just can’t stop bombfucking these Afghan whores as we gunchoke ‘em. One sweet taste of democracy and jesus, and they’ll thankyousuck America’s cock. Those fucks weren’t champs like my Birdy though, no matter how hard we choked; they spat more sons so we spat more bullets, ‘cept all mothers bled.

In those days, that thing she did cost five bucks, and a hit of dope dreamed brown to blonde, but the mouths we fucked were as sandy dry as the dirt we raped with boots, blood, and bombs. The cheap ones of us raped more than just dirt. Our bastards may blast their brothers if we don’t set our children straight.

In those days, snipers in penthouses outside our Keep potshoted patrols until the cavalry punted AC130s up over the base. Flares popped in the black as they spun pylon turns and fucked the city so good I knew we’d get the thankyousuck. After a kick off like that, who wouldn’t chin up and be a champ; but they loved the choke almost as much as Birdy, so we obliged.

In those days, we were culling the animals day and night. Caved bats with Kalashnikovs and RPG7s. Mortars rained on us once in the opium fields. Sergeant Cruz sheered a ‘splosion so was untouched, but swallowed his tongue and mumbled to death holding Jimmy’s brains. My brothers’ death moans urged me forward into the defilade where two kids stuffed shells down muzzles for their father. I let the family hold hands as their lives winged away together to some nicer hell than the one I shot them in, and only the poppies teared. Many died in those fields, and maybe the parts of my brothers that mattered will come home to burn within the bodies of those they loved and left behind.

When the House whistled retreat for the rich hippies, Birdy flew in my hands and the bed moaned against the wall. After the tours with the Screaming Eagles, landing home in Independence, Missouri returned me to a world I thought hidden behind wardrobes or only whispered from books people said they read but didn’t. Miss Liberty cried over guys fucking guys, yet had ordered us to get buttfucked. Paper education meant shit, but Di’s Diamonds flirted with the college boy over me, so with the last face the brown boys ever saw, I said I’d stick him with my Bowie, and no textbook taught him better.

Poverty meant no hospital, but those scrubbed fucks knew nothing of life and death, never sewed an arm severed by a Humvee fender while under fire. I said, bring it, son, and he did. He nested in my shoebox like jesus himself as my Birdy cooed, and I knew what I had lived for. The night Di’s Diamonds burnt down, my job burnt with it, but my Birdy got herself a rock the size of our son’s fist.