Ballistics

I was looking for the flathead

in the grease-stained gut of the box.

Instead, I found the brass,

heavy and dull,

hiding under a handful of galvanized nails.

It smells of copper and the way a closet smells

when it hasn't been opened in decades.

The rim is jagged,

uneven where it was crimped by a machine in 1944

to hold a fire he never talked about,

not even when the cheap whiskey made him soft.