Wartime Metal

They burst into our home
Demanding for metal
Snatching things as they roam
For anything that will settle
Enough to make a bomb
Or maybe a tank or a plane
As tears drop from mom
Like grenades about to detonate
They search in our rooms
Chopping things into parts
Our trunk thrown open with a boom
I hear the gunshots in my family's hearts
As they grab the dog tags on chains
Each one for the pilot sons of four
Using their metal corpse to build airplanes
That oddly, I think, will only  kill more.


-anna sluder

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