War Movies

By Claire Millikin

In Tifton, near Cairo and Americus, grandfather watches
through private tears at the downtown movie theater
a film about the war in which he fought,

and through the basalt theater door grandfather,
as a teenage soldier walks, prescient ghost who already knows the
end
of the movie he watches over and over, about a war decades ago

when he saw his friends walk through that solid door.
I’ll put on the jacket he bequeathed me soon, a soldier’s coat,
needing a reason not to leave myself, though there’s no end to
wars.