Hurt Locker

With the poem’s opening acknowledgement, “Nothing but hurt left here” (Line 1), Turner immediately drops readers into the hurt and trauma associated with war and remembrance, much in the same way that soldiers enter an unfamiliar place and bear witness to “bullets and pain” (Line 2). The speaker expands the war imagery to share a vivid, sensory experience by using coarse, vulgar language: “and all the fucks and goddamns / and Jesus Christs of the wounded” (Lines 4-5). The coarse language not only creates an auditory experience for readers, but it also infuses physical, emotional, and mental stress into the poem. Swearing is also a stereotypical association with combat and military life. By including the swear words, the speaker is not only underscoring the realities of war but also making the soldiers’ personality more tangible. The stanza concludes by repeating Line 1 with a slight twist: “Nothing left here but the hurt” (Line 6). The bookending line creates an echo and parallelism thematically and structurally.

The second stanza continues with the strong, violence-laden vocabulary but adds physicality. The speaker uses words like “see” (Line 7), “rolls” (Line 9), and “punches” (Line 10).