Semtex

SEMTEX-H

By JC STREET © 2004

You can tell when it’s
Semtex-H or
Semtex-Hotel as we call it in
the security business it
goes off fast with a sharp crack, whereas

a fertilizer bomb kind of huffs and puffs awhile
before it blows your house down we
found her leg in an old ditch by a
rusting wheel it was
thigh high and dirty a
dirty wound no
way to sew it back on the
honeycomb of the riven thighbone was
arresting we

went back to where she was, Eamonn keeping the belt tight high up
on her thigh she was
conscious but dazed, mewling a little
dazed and glazed I
put my hand on her forehead just
rested it there lightly on the cold, damp
skin she was
about 16 or so
drifting toward the angels the
great saphenous vein spurting a little I
wanted to squeeze it twixt thumb and forefinger my
brain was racing to remember
the protocol
for blown off legs, Shane
was talking on his cellphone but we could already
hear the armored Land Rovers in the distance, I

put my thumb and forefinger on that
thick, white worm and the blood stopped, Eamonn
had pulled her skirt down for modesty but you couldn’t help seeing, you
were absorbed with small things because
we were hypnotized, robotic almost, we
were saving her life to
keep from screaming, our
lives had flowed to this moment, she was
the only being in our world now, she
was everything to us, I

was counting the threads in the legseam of her
panties the
fine white thread, up it comes for
an eighth of an inch then
down in again
for an eighth and then up it comes, we

kept murmuring to her ”it’s
all right love” but
she knew
drifting into shock, living
in her dreamworld, her
nightmare and then

all was bustle, slamming doors
pounding feet, combat
fatigues and blue uniforms, Royal
Ulster Constabulary faces
retching
angry, some
moved away and vomited
by the side of the road but
an Army medic clamped the artery, moved
my hand away, no nonsense, “Okay
boys . . . Okay,” and only then

only then
did the tears flow

-30-

May 17, 2004 Kingston Ontario