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The Language of War
War takes things. And as he lay there, a morphine drip trickling quickly in his arm, they told him “We took your leg,” He asked “took it where?” As if it had been escorted to a spring dance, or slid on tuxedo pants and stepped into Ferragamos for box seats…
Republic of Glass, Endless Knot, By the River
BY THE RIVER Outside, snow claims its solitude flake by flake. Women's voices pitched like frantic birds are trapped inside the radio. A cloth falls on the sand where they lay out steaming tea in glasses sliced by morning sun. Between bowls of dates and morning prayer, the bomb— Glass,…
Rapture (October 2001)
The elect are drinking coffee this morning, feeling every imperfection in their joints. The dead in Christ are tingling in their boxes, listening with dry ears for the sound of a horn, a ram's horn tipped with gold like the Hebrews used to blow. The trees are angry this fall;…
Hand, Baret, and Bayonet in my Mother’s Chest and Wild Mushrooms
HAND, BARET, AND BAYONET IN MY MOTHER'S CHEST What we call fate does not come from the outside, but emerges from us… The future stands still, but we move in infinite space. —Rainer Maria Rilke The scimitar gaze of the champion swimmer in your wedding picture just returned from another…
LeRoi ‘Ace’ Evans
LEROI “ACE” EVANS (1894-1920) Dawn drew us, that bloodthirsty bitch and the gory goddess Glory, her sister-witch, and like moths, flame-fascinated, which, forgetful of self and life and breath, fly into beauty, that place of fiery death, we flew on. Her rose flush sobered and roused us and in the…
Selling Honey on the Road to Sarajevo, Love and the Hangman in Croatia, Untitled
SELLING HONEY ON THE ROAD TO SARAJEVO 1. Potocari, near Srebrenica, 2005 Groundsheets of mist. The sweating of grasses. It covers the boots of the workers breaking the earth in their windcheaters and bright anoraks. It eats the blades of their shovels. Down on their knees among them are the…
Abu Golgotha, The Red and the Green
ABU GOLGOTHA By the river of Babylon, regard the clump of main battle tanks dozing like hippos in the dust. Centurions in desert camouflage and flak jackets play poker on a sandbag. Boys wading in the reed-shallows fill gasoline cans with water. A robed man vending ices, cherry, lemon, lime;…
Beyond History
The First People lived in the big house and the First People had everything. In the rivers and streams fat fish leapt to nets while birds sang in the trees. In sunshine and shadow fruit ripened and fell into waiting baskets. The First People lived in the big house and…
The Submarine Cakes
At the James Island Cub Scout Bake Sale and Auction, we bid on cakes fathers and cubs had baked, no female help allowed (except in cleanup). Most cakes bore emblems: wolves with lolling tongues of red-hot cinnamon, bears with jagged fangs of candy corn, lions with licorice snouts. Charleston's a…
Casualty Days
Back here in the world as summer passed through bright and gritty dog days, anchored girls whose time was not their own, having been bought and paid for by Northwestern Bell linked and braided coiled color snakes red white grey white across the continent, Sharon to Missoula, Pam to New…
What Was Left Out, Perchance to Dream
WHAT WAS LEFT OUT I. Dear Mom and Dad, these are the lines you will never hear. You wanted to be assured that I would be safe here on this fire-base after the patrols. So in my earlier tapes, I have only talked about easy outs that you knew were…
The Immolant Approaches the Pentagon
Brain of speckled white hot neural flame, why not the rest of me now pure compressed of no For hating war, I am no hero our age does not generate those fictive, ancient, boltneck beasts, clear of eye, no intelligent thing, yes, you, lover, sweet lover widow, bestowed silent midnight…
The Sacrifice
& the wind howled black ice slapped explosions of dead grey froth leaping into death scrying wind did not the men huddled on the slick rain cursed deck pray for poseidon's mercy even as the ships jostled & careened into the other the shuddering keel the thundering crack of boards…
John McBride
I was born and raised in Chicago, near Wrigley Field, and am thus fated to be a lifelong Cubs fan. After high school, I attended John Carroll University, Cleveland, Ohio, on a drama scholarship, graduating in three years, magna cum laude, with a B.A. in English. I received a Ph.…
Joan Hutcheson
Charles F. Sorrow, Jr.
Just a name picked off the wall, like initials carved in a tree, discovered years later while out walking with the dogs—except that this carving means you died in a war that wasn't a war. Your passage into death, maybe it was a mercy, maybe you hadn't wanted to come…
After the Battle of Berlin
Not your wedding day, not the day your son was born. What you remember cracked old man is the day your book closed and you were done. Cocky little belly gunner could stand the storm of metal embers as you fell into burning sky. No man's boy killed hope with…
Yes
He's home then? Yes Well you must be pleased. Good day to you missis. Home all right is he? Yes Good show, good day to you ma'am I hear he's home Yes That's nice, good morning to you missis. Yes, he's home Well part of him But you can't say…
The Gift and Shadow by the Water
THE GIFT They asked no questions, brown-sleeved knuckles pulled us out of houses, lives and loves, Truck-loaded us behind high walls, jail-like walls of factory barracks. We stood on broken-edged tables cleaning metal parts of sewing machines— so we were told. A sharp-voiced bell summoned us to the eating room…
Crossing
I Bits of seaweed float just under the surface. A soft shuddering hums up through my feet, massive propellers churn, the boat is alive. Water begins to boil like soup. Down below everyone is dressed in white. Handkerchiefs, also white, fly back and forth—sea gulls in a feeding frenzy. I…
The Bird Has Come
The bird has come. The people below are unaware the bird has come to share its wisdom. The bird has come. To find a mate from out of the gate of heaven. The bird has come. An absurd bird that lays eggs in the sky to let them hatch wherever…
Inspection
after the painting of the contemporary Russian artist, Maxim Kantor Believe, if you will, that he isn't guilty. But brighten the bare bulb a little at each denial. The tile will glare, his tonsils burning like the screams he chokes down to keep us off him. When he's drunk on…
The Golan Heights, 1968
(Incident that failed to appear in any newspaper or radio report: Three unarmed Arab men attempting to steal cattle were killed by an Israeli Army patrol) Imagine you are a child with a brown crayon and draw hills: Bump. Line. Bump. Another line. Imagine you're a hawk, and circle those…
Minutes, Abu Ghraib Prison, October 18, 2003
I. US Soldier, 12:06 pm In the latrine, slipping off the panties I wore under tan fatigues, I think back to what my mother told me the first time I'd been with a man, then, again, the day I enlisted. You can give him everything and, even after you do,…
Blood Behind the First Company Reunion
Flashes of Korea slept for fifteen years till Joe Tedesco phoned to split some wonder between my wife and me. He Ping-Ponged bits, until reunion screwed some sense back in for me to drive somewhere beneath June's leafy sleeves. Arteries wound us down to veins. A town house struck my…
The Flood Coffins
I was a wild stalk halfway sprung between man and boy in that broken October when the General died. Our fine grey knight of Virginia quit the world in a run of black storm and flood that swallowed whole the county. Not many know, but it was Charlie Chittum and…
Uncle Sam
I think my enemies are getting close. I think I've sown the seeds of my own doom. (And all I ever meant to sow was love With no one special or exactly mine). Perhaps I never should have thrown that last Dead cigarette outside this moving car. Last night I…
A World at War
My mother didn't give me life, she gave me time To speak my mind, to express some insight of mine To write a rhyme, because that expression is a right of mine To open a mind and to fight a crime To ask why we are so blind when our…
The Eyes of the Beholder
The Iraqis are sick people and we are the chemotherapy. [1] We stand for human liberty. [2] We shoot them down like the morons they are. [3] Freedom is beautiful and when people are free they express their opinions. [4] They are killing us and nobody's talking about it. We…
Dead Center
We'll hit dead center. The center is dead Baghdad, the dead center, the bloody center Baghdad, the center with the cherry filling A painless Pac-man pogrom, Nintendo warriors in a flawless execution We send our hamburger-helper heroes to render their Captain Video carnage as we hunker down in the living…
Breaking the Curfew, Churchill’s Contrition
BREAKING THE CURFEW In the market of Jenin, bread is soggy with their blood— Children so small they fluttered through tents of honey and fruit. Hidden in caves a week, they were completely dissolute with sunlight and the breeze of the dessert. Until a scud Of gas and the carnivorous…
The View from the Tower
I THE H'ORS D'OEUVRERIE For the price of a drink it was yours. For the occasion, you put on heels or a tie. Oh, if this was Babel's, we were Babylonian. The jewels on our hands spoke in glasses, low soft lamps on lips, a tip of the head, fingers…
French Collaborator, Soldiers
FRENCH COLLABORATOR Call me Genevieve, but don't ask me what comes next. Oh, I'm not going to jump into the river or take holy orders, or marry one of those pie-faced Americans who piss cigarettes and chocolate. I'll never retrieve my job on the boulevard Saint-Michel where the vases have…
Warflower
“You don't mean to say—” our captain said And took a drag from his Red Hussar, Savoring the flavor of that drawn-out pause More than the standard-issue twist of shag. “You don't mean to say,” he said at last, 'That you've never kissed a woman?” The words crumbled into smoke.…
Zoonotic
Caged, toothless, a lion sits in the manner of Kabul alley cats, front paws slightly curled inward toward his chest, hind legs folded close to his body, head erect, staring beyond what moves beyond the bars. Marjan's mane mangled from a grenade tossed five years ago that killed his mate.…
Open Minds Quarterly
Poetry and literature of mental health recovery
Pentimento Magazine
Literary journal for disabled writers and their community
Lt. O’Malley
When Lt. O'Malley faced the firing squad his memories popped, German gibberish gobbled his brain. His mother's foul whiskey breath bathed him in gold light. The time he saw his sister naked ripped across his mind. “Pervert, pervert,” she screamed. He remembered the time he stole a baseball from the…
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Morgan Grayce Willow
Morgan Grayce Willow holds an M.A. in creative writing from Colorado State University. Her awards include: a SASE/Jerome Fellowship, Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowships in both poetry and prose, and a Loft-McKnight in poetry. Morgan's chapbook Arpeggio of Appetite was published by Finishing Line Press in 2005. Her poems have…
Cathy Sullivan
After the Battle of Berlin is the fifth of the ten poems I have written. They were all written for a class at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, CT, from which I should graduate in December. As a middle aged women and mother of a son, I was struck by…
Ann Smith
I was born and raised in England, and my father served not only in World War II but also in the Spanish Civil War. I studied history and English literature at university, and have always been “addicted” to the voices of the past. Anna Knowles, whom I have known for…
Lina Schreier
Gunilla Norris
Gunilla Norris has published eleven children's books and four books on spirituality and everyday life. The fifth book in that series, A Mystic Garden, will be published by BlueBridge in April 2006. She is the author of one book of poems, Learning From The Angel. Her poems have appeared in…
Danny Drane
Jane Collins
Ms. Collins was the cook in the poem that placed as Finalist in the 2005 War Poetry Contest sponsored by Winning Writers.
Edgar Biamonte
Edgar L. Biamonte received his B.A. in English from Queens College, Flushing, New York, in 1961 and his M.S. in Education from Elmira College Graduate School, Elmira, New York, in 1968. He taught English for twenty-four years in Elmira, including poetry and creative writing from 1962 to 1985. He completed…
