Poems by Scott Hamilton  Emma Smith, "Lead" (2011). Emma Smith,
"Lead" (2011).  Elegy for a survivor of the war on Afghanistan
All surgeons are related to their patients by blood. The best
surgeons work quickly in the dark. At eight o’clock the lights
in the psych ward flick off, cellphones and girlfriends are
taken away, and the nurses turn to guards. You lie still in the
blackout, waiting for a bombing raid.  You often ask about the
past. The past is a piece of rough skin soldered to the back of
your head. Hair is beginning to grow over it. You slept through
the surgery and screamed only once, just before you woke up.
Your comrades in the ward screamed in sympathy. Now, every
night, the dream plays backwards at exactly the right speed, so
that you can admire the hips and the cheekbones of the women as
they fly slowly out of their crater back up to the market
square, and slip their clean dark hands back into their purses,
or back onto the bomb-shaped loaves of bread, onto quinces and
mangoes as smooth as fr