“KM4” Poems & Drawings by Tom Sleigh and Michael Hafftka

And there, among the dead, appearing beside your tent flap,

at your elbow in the mess hall,

waiting to use, or just leaving, the showers and latrine,

the boy with his trousers rolled appears

like an afterimage burned into an antique computer screen,

haunting whatever the cursor tries to track.

So he liked to play at games with other youths?

The English has the slightly

too formal sound of someone

being poured through the sieve of another language.

Syllable after syllable

piling up and up until the boy,

buried to the neck,

slowly vanishes into overtones that are and are not his.

As if he were a solid melting to liquid turning to gas feeding a flame.