All the Heat We Could Carry
Charlie Bondhus
Main Street Rag Press
ISBN: 978-1-59948-436-5

Reviewer: Ann Wehrman


Where have all the soldiers gone?
Gone to graveyards, everyone.
Oh, when will they ever learn?
–Pete Seeger, “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?”

          As the saying goes, war is hell on earth. Escalation of human violence against oneself, one’s family, and one’s tribe effects a tireless machine of destruction. There may, however, be some hope in that men and women, at a certain point of growth, come to recognize that there is no glory in fighting, no pleasure in revenge, and no justice in evening the score. One may then search for non-violent ways to defend oneself and loved ones when necessary, including using the enemy’s strength against him/her, as well as practicing passive resistance, psychic trickery, and ruse. One also seeks to understand how to turn the other cheek, to embrace and love those who hate.

          In All the Heat We Could Carry, Charlie Bondhus does not write poetry about transcending violence, however. The poet looks this world in the face and accepts the present, both the evil and the benign. Bondhus writes of the dehumanizing experience of soldiering in the current conflict in Afghanistan, interwoven with a gay man’s love poetry, rich with passion, tenderness, youthful infatuation, and mature affection. The collection alternates poems of death and life, killing and the life-giving act that is human love. The balance holds, and the reader realizes that Bondhus offers no simple or idealistic resolution; he pulls no punches about the experience in the killing fields. In “Talking about It,” the speaker explains to civilian friends:

war is exciting
except when it’s not.

You realize this at night,
during third watch,
patrolling under the same stars
you used to look to as a kid,

. . .

but then you remember
when the convoy fell under fire,
and no one knew at first where the shots
were coming from, so the turret gunner

spun and fired into the brown and blue infinite,
and O’Reilly kept screaming “Fuck!” over and over,
and Rodriguez hucked a grenade
like it was a tennis ball,

…

there was a part that didn’t want it to end,
and afterwards you felt anointed

like one of those warrior-kings from the Bible.

. . .

From now on you’ll either be in survival mode
or bored fuckless, and the thought of going home

feels more like death than the real thing.
So you sit on a rock
and stare, unblinking,
into the camouflage night.

          Despite chronicling the soul-numbing violence, Bondhus’s poems demonstrate that life goes on in spite of unspeakable acts of war, in spite of the killing. In direct, honest, translucent writing, poem after poem describes human sexual love, romantic love, sweet enough to twist the reader’s heart at the loss, the spiritual, emotional, and physical maiming and disfigurement that war causes, how it blights and steals the joy, love, and beauty with which those who fight could have filled their days and nights, had only peace prevailed in human hearts.

          In “Sharing a Bed,” the poet writes,

I remember the first evening in bed,
making love with the lights on.

Outside the window, a hanging basket
of red impatiens
and a ruby-throated hummingbird.

In late spring’s greenish light
my head was a bowed peony,
            your torso,
            a grand urn
            of tissuey ranunculus.

          Similarly, in “What I Mean when I Rest My Hand on Your Ankle,” the speaker declares romantic love:

I’d like to tell you

that I find the coal and silver hairs on your leg
to be a delicious and sweaty metaphor
for the temporal dynamics of our couplehood,
our feelings as shiny as a new apple
and as old as the idea of apples.

          Bondhus’s speakers are not insensitive to war’s toll on their bodies and minds, their ability to feel and express love, and their relationships. In “Non Sequitur,” the poet writes,

              I read a story in the Gay City News
              about a returning Marine
              who pistol-whipped his boyfriend
              into a coma and then swallowed a bullet
              black and hot as a coal.

              This is the kind of thing
              that doesn’t happen to us.

Instead, we find ourselves
in conversations of near-misses

where dull, heavy words fall
like powderless mortar shells
impacting the earth and crumpling
into something dented,
something shapeless,
smelling vaguely of fire.

          What is more, in “Trauma,” the speaker admits,

I can’t make you understand
that everything is dangerous now;

that you can’t slip your arms around my chest
and pull me to the carpet anymore;

that sex feels like crossing
the Korengal Valley without body armor;

that when you try to pin my arms
my instinct is to kill you.

          Even though the voices of soldiers and survivors have surfaced over the years and are continuing to surface, perhaps in greater numbers over the past couple of decades, there is still much silence when it comes to what war does to the men and women who live through it. The tradition has been dual: we cry “All hail!” to the troops who protect and defend while at the same time failing to attend fully to the mental and physical toll exacted by war, the lives ravaged by disability and mental illness. The darkness of a VA bar, despite the camaraderie, testifies eloquently that there are no words for the loss engendered by war. To speak of a horror, a wrong, rather than to silence it may be a first step toward recognizing its evil and addressing it. These eloquent poems offer that testimony without pretending to offer any solution to war other than the balance of love.

          Charlie Bondhus’s All the Heat We Could Carry is a reflective collection of poems of the moment, of the senses, and of the mind. The poems name what occurs in war and in love, clearly and realistically. These poems analyze war and death, love and life, recording them without deliberate judgment (though perhaps they implicitly offer suggestions or even mandates). In the end, while some readers may proclaim that war is inexcusable hell on earth, the speakers in Bondhus’s poems sway in the shifting rhythms of trauma and passionate love. Bondhus admits all, seemingly without asking for explanation, or at least without revealing answers.