Retired
Brigadier General, Shoshanna Meryl Heim, served in the Israel Defense
Force, Tzahal (צה"ל), from 1983 to 1997. She is a graduate of West
Point (Summa Cum Laude). Brigadier General Heim served as an
intelligence officer in the Mossad under Efraim Halevy from 1998 to
2002. During her tenure she authored numerous strategic memos
incorporated into United States military policy by Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld. Brigadier General Heim currently serves as advisor to
Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Her book, The Legacy of a Torso,
(Time Warner, 2007) was ranked first on The New York Times Best Seller
List for thirty-two weeks. She lives in Safed, Israel, with her cat
Plasan.
When I wrote of the women with the M2HB Browning,
the .50 caliber of varying cyclic rates of fire,
450-575 rounds per minute, it was agit-prop,
in the desert with a tripod of steel armor plate,
body-hunting, singing, in orgy, it was agit-prop;
when I wrote of the god,
sadistic, exiled from himself, his life of border
security and bomb-sniffing dogs,
it was me, split open, unable to speak, in exile from
myself.
There is no desert, there is no god, there is memory
of my shrapnel life, myself split open in Gaza,
the half-dead child
beside me among the doctors, and a word
of rescue from his brown eyes.
No more agit! No more prop!
Now, for the first time, the god lifts his M2,
for I am cramped in place, and litters the sand
with a hundred more.
the .50 caliber of varying cyclic rates of fire,
450-575 rounds per minute, it was agit-prop,
in the desert with a tripod of steel armor plate,
body-hunting, singing, in orgy, it was agit-prop;
when I wrote of the god,
sadistic, exiled from himself, his life of border
security and bomb-sniffing dogs,
it was me, split open, unable to speak, in exile from
myself.
There is no desert, there is no god, there is memory
of my shrapnel life, myself split open in Gaza,
the half-dead child
beside me among the doctors, and a word
of rescue from his brown eyes.
No more agit! No more prop!
Now, for the first time, the god lifts his M2,
for I am cramped in place, and litters the sand
with a hundred more.
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