On long foot patrols we wanted the chickens,
roasted and bronzed, hanging
from the steel roofs of vendor stands,
the Iraqi sun burning
like a heat lamp. We had seen months
of Cobra cooking: teriyaki chicken
the color of transmission fluid; mixed vegetables
that broke like Styrofoam
in the mouth; the mush of grits
always cold. This changed, for a day, when LT Stanton—
a man who once suffered
a week of the shits
after eating vanilla ice cream
from little Mohammad,
the ten-year-old town salesman—
walked to the vendor with two Iraqi Police
and pointed to the first chicken in the row
glowing with warm grease, almost as large
as Stanton’s tan bald head. The IPs sat
at a white table behind the stand; LT joined them,
setting his M4 like a twig between his knees,
the muzzle face-down
on the black asphalt. I turned my back
with the rest of the platoon, all of us a circle—
security—around the table,
the hanging chickens. Sometimes
you are certain
something terrible is about
to happen, but we just watched the endless
movement of the crowd, the glares
from older men, the women passing
as if we were only date palms. LT yelled
my name. I took three steps back, turned, he handed me
a piece of the chicken wrapped
in warm pita. Not wanting anyone to see me
without both hands on the rifle, my head scanning
each detail of the crowd, I pretended
to wipe the sweat
from my temple, my cheek, but instead stuffed
the food in my mouth: tomato, onion, something
I couldn’t name. On that street
some bombs had blown so close
our legs and hands shook
for hours; weeks ago, three IPs had been shot
dead in their jeep. But I just stood there
and chewed, because that chicken
was the best thing I’d tasted
in years, and somehow
I was enjoying this day—
though that wasn’t something
I was supposed to show,
so I bit my tongue,
and made sure not one
person in those crowds could know.
This poem appeared in the October 25, 2012 issue of the magazine.