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Where Is the Inside of This Out of Country Absence

by Jacey Blue Renner

Today begins just like the rest: poached
dawn, winter sun glaze, but our branches
aren’t tangled up in do. Last names side-
saddle our tongues, while we wait
morning hatchling, feathering first
before the day crackles with bright yolk.

A war fades into the left leg pocket
of my worn. Nomex seams hold onto an M9
folded (pocket square), two chopsticks
for eating rice on the run. Strike plates
shield from the unfriendlies, three apples
in the ruck in case I run out of bullets.

Today ends. With steak, waiting on Sunday
to bow out, give Monday room to breathe.
Gristle and spice leave me ready for home,
for the triangle of beauty marks across her.

Her curls fret in the wind, in the way I say: soon.

Jacey Blue Renner holds an MFA from Lesley University. A recipient of the Harwood Emerging Artist Fund’s Marion & Kathryn Crissey Award, her poetry has been published in the anthology Looking Back to Place, and by Connotation Press, Brink Magazine, and Porchlight, among others. Most recently, you can find her poetry as part of the Tupelo Press 30/30 Project & included in two forthcoming anthologies: one published by Tupelo Press, the other, a collection of ekphrastic poetry drawn from photography of the Iraq War. Her first collection will explore the importance of the poetic perspective during war times.

Pride

by Christopher Ryan

As I lay myself down to rest
It seems like eternity, but minutes at best

My sleep is shallow and next to none
But I am a “Father, Brother and Son”
And a “Combat Infantryman” with a gun

We enter our sector like so many times before
And live the flashes, sounds and smells of war

As my body begins to tremble out of control
My fear boils over from deep inside my soul

With nowhere to run and nowhere to hide
We move forward with our “Blue Infantry Pride.”

Christopher G. Ryan joined the Army after graduating from High School in 1988. He served 12 years as an Army infantryman and has deployed overseas for training, served in Desert Shield/Desert Storm, and concluded his military career after serving his second tour in Iraq with the historical unit “The Fighting 69th” (1st/69th Infantry) during Operation Iraqi Freedom III. He likes to spend time with his family, his girlfriend and her two children and his friends. He is also the proud father of a son who is attending college. He currently resides in his hometown of Buffalo, New York and serves his community as a Police Officer.

We Mighty Warriors

by James Loomis

My days as a mighty warrior
Were told to never end
Once a Marine Always a Marine
It’s your life, your code

The enemy is clear
Well sort of….
Killing the enemy in war
It’s only one squeeze away.

Those Mighty warrior days have gone
Once a person they called “Bull”
Over two hundred and forty pounds
The Animal Mother they wanted.

Now the Bull is on a budget
A mighty warrior’s meal
Reduced to Top Ramen and PBJs
Though we fight on.

Fake offers and interviews
Broken promises and hunger
The world we once walked
As Mighty Warriors
The proud and few.

Now almost under two hundred pounds
The once spearheaded Bull
The one who put himself in front of the weak
Is frail, broken

We Mighty Warriors fight now to survive
Then our day comes.
11th day of the 11th month
Free meals for those Warriors.

The Mighty Warrior spends hours
Hunting his food
From place to place armed
With a paper saying he served.

Served as a Mighty Warrior, now to feast
His one day, through bloodshot eyes.
Over tight belt to hold pants too big.
His shameful glare at the mirror
The Mighty Warriors count
364 days till their next feast.

James Loomis never saw anything in this world that made more sense than the Marine Corps at a time of war. He served two tours in Iraq as an infantry machine gunner from 2005-2007; the first lasted nine months and the second eight. He wrote “We Mighty Warriors” about his own change from Marine to civilian in August 2008, which led him to years of unemployment and poverty.

Flight Deck Mornings

by David Worden

​Flight Deck Mornings
​
​Sitting on the deck you feel the coldness of the steel
​Yet far beneath the steel emits a radiant heat
​Sitting there tired and beat, sad of life and full of pride
​Observe the sun as it sets on high.

​Water bluer then any color in a crayon box
Reminders of a man and his blue ox
Skin of the ship is gray, the color of a sad and dismal day
We call the color haze-gray and underway.

You wear your protective clothes, vest, gloves, goggles, cranial,
And let not forget Mickey Mouse ears.
Ears to protect you so you can hear.
​Sounds of engines, jets, catapults and steams escaping the bowels of the ship
​Lest not forgets the people hollering, reminding us to slow down so we don’t trip
Bells, whistles, horns and such
Then there are the speakers that tell us much.

​As planes, jets and helicopters engines turn you feel the burn
​The burn is in many places you see, there’s the fire that burns in me,
​The one to join them in that place on high, it is the one that makes me sigh
​Then the burn from the heat, heat as intense as any desert can be
​The deck hard beneath your feet makes your legs strong and lean
​Keeping your head on a swivel makes all of your senses keen.

Taste the salt in the air as it sticks to your face
You get the burning sensation in that awkward place.
There is a thickness in the air, one that you taste as you breathe
It is the fuel from the jets, planes, tractors and ship that you breathe
Chewing on the air as you inhale
Watching your breath as you exhale.

Your nose hairs twinge with a scent of the exhaust
These are scents that seem to be lost
​The smell of bacon comes from below
​A wonderful smell erodes
​Breakfast is done or so it would seem
​Or is this yet another one of my dreams

​Then a sound comes over the five-MC
And it is time for me to move, to work, to run
For I am a flight deck sailor and to me this is fun
This is the truest form of living life for me.

David Worden served in the both the U.S. Army (Infantry) and Navy (Aviation), retiring after a collective 23 years of service to his country (1984 – 2007). His military deployments took him to 5 of the 7 Continents and all 5 of the Oceans. He currently works in the DOD industry and is an Adjunct Professor for ERAU. As the parents of six young adults, he and his wife Wendy are awaiting the next adventure that their empty nest will produce.

Retreat

by D. A. Gray

I.

Redness invades a soldier’s face
after the vice of crossed arms closes
against the cracked proving ground.
Still, it suprises me. We practice
the chokes, the pressure points, the things
I hope we’ll never use. My hands grip
his collar from the inside
in that textbook way so my arms
can cross, scissor-like cutting air.

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A Battlefield Full of Mothers

by Doug D’Elia

I’ve passed the point of wondering
How they stand the pain
These boys lying in puddles
Of their own blood,
staring into the haze of war
with glazed over, don’t let me die
eyes.

Split open teenage boys
crying for mommies
continents away,
because they know
they’ll come,
they always have.

They’ll drop grocery bags,
suddenly feel faint, or gaze off at
the sky, imaging pear shaped womb clouds,
pregnant with warm forest rain, waiting for
their waters to break and splash the earth
with life nourishing amniotic fluid.

Mothers have magical powers
encoded before time was. A 6th or 7th sense
distress beacon of revolving lamps
designed to illuminate potential danger.

Soldiers tell of seeing mothers,
blocking bridges strapped with TNT,
standing near landmines and trip wires.
I’ve seen them in the stress of battle.
I’ve seen those see-through mothers glide over
battlefields wet with blood and birthing fluids.

Astral projections,
mistaken for angels,
kneeling over sons
holding their hand or head.

Flooding their boy with
images of his first baseball glove,
favorite bow and arrows set,
the wooden chemistry box with six
fragile glass test tubes,
and green toy soldiers that
never refused a fight,
never took a casualty,
and never lost a war.

Mothers channel life.
They bring forth children.
The bond is eternal
The severing of a hospital ward
umbilical cord is symbolic.
A shiny silver ethereal cord remains
like a phantom limb, felt long after
the flesh is discarded
as biological waste.
Its purpose served,
a higher order claims priority.

I often feel a maternal divine presence
next to me on the battlefield.
I can glimpse her brilliance in
my peripheral vision

She is here to comfort her children
and if it is time, take them
to a place especially prepared for them.
Other times, only God knows why,
she leaves them in my care
a season longer.

Sometimes I think I can feel the silver cord
connecting us to the divine.
I can sense the love, compassion and grace
ripping swiftly through the umbilical cord,
more calming than any morphine
I can dispense, and

I know the wounded body
of this son
won’t die in my arms,
not today,
not this time.

Doug grew up in Holyoke, Massachusetts, and served as an Air Force medic from 1965-1969. His war related poems have appeared in Evergreen Review, Line of Advance, and Contemporary Haibun. His chapbook “A Thousand Peaceful Buddhas” is available via email through dougvandelia@gmail.com. He is co-owner of the Onondaga School of Therapeutic Massage, and a member of the Syracuse Veterans Writers Group.