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Get Cara Losier Chanoine’s writing in the FREE PDF file 2013 poetry chapbook How a Bullet Behaves				You can also order this as a 2013 6" x 9" perfect-bound paperback ISBN# book! Click on the cover spread for the book How a Bullet Behaves

Constellation Scars

Cara Losier Chanoine

In my fifth reincarnation, I was a warrior
of Troy. My legs were
rubber band snap taut beneath my tunic
and my eyes were black
with all the blood I’d seen dry
on the bodies of friends.

In my five hundred and fifth reincarnation,
I was an Italian baby girl.
My eyes were blue from looking so much
at the sky, and my mouth was an Arkansas tornado,
tearing up the roots of all the words I tried to say.

As a warrior of Troy, my body was
a constellation of scars, some grey
with the left-behind metal of an enemy sword,
some so fresh they were the raw, smooth pink
of the inside of a woman.
There is music in the sound of marching men.

As a little girl,
my brother taught me to make the fat bellied bodies
of letters in cursive and my grandmother
taught me not to laugh in cemeteries.
It was not a time when anyone
taught their little girls how to wage a war.

The poets like to say it was about Helen,
but I’ve seen her face
and it didn’t launch those ships.
This is not the filmy stuff of fairy tales,
and Helen wasn’t the queen
everyone would like her to be.
It was just a game of chess that was already in check
and Helen was only a pawn.

In my five hundred and fifth reincarnation,
I grew up
to be a warrior. I came of age just in time
to join the female rebellion, and they thought
we were becoming victims.
We were just making waves
after so many years of being told to lie flat.
You should’ve taught your daughters to be
soldiers.
In truth, it was a war that began
long before my blue eyes and tornado tongue,
was a war waged by Margery Kempe and Virginia Woolf,
by Audre Lord and Eve Ensler.
Maybe my next reincarnation will spit me out
as someone like that, but for now
my face is blurred into obscurity.
For now, my face belongs to every woman
walking down the battlefield
we call the street.

As a cause, we knew it was unworthy.
As Trojan warriors, we strapped on the armor
anyway. The weight of it
is like another body lashed across your back.
It’s true, we should’ve known better,
but we were all
too goddamn tired to be afraid
of an ugly wooden horse.
Real heroes never try to claim their titles,
so I’m not bitter that it’s not my name
that they remember. I stood with men
who had stars sliced through their backs,
swords bare and helmets at our feet
because we knew it was the end.
The poets never write about the smell of that much death.

When they talk about this day,
let them remember not that it was a battle
that we lost.
Let them remember the recklessness
of constellation scars,
naked swords and empty helmets.
Let them remember that this
is what glory looks like.

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