Posts from the ‘Poetry’ Category

Pillar of Salt

By Bryan Blanchard

Raining fire, burning steel,
And now I see haunted

Images of headless
Bodies bathed in bloodstained

Sand; of a mannequin
Head with a swollen face

And lifeless eyes pleading
Back; of an explosion,

A disfigured Humvee,
Staggering down the road,

A charred and gaping door,
A torso hanging out—

Bryan K. Blanchard, a native of Glens Falls, New York, and a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom, holds a B.A. in criminal justice from SUNY Plattsburgh. After serving for nine years in the United States Army Reserve, he now writes essays, poetry, and fiction. He lives in Melrose, New York with his wife, also a veteran, and children. Follow him on Twitter: @BryanKBlanchard.

Mask

By Chris Blount

must invent a mask
so I may sleep
this air to strong
drugs me to keep
thoughts flowing wild
straight to my pen
truly hope
it n’er end

Chris Blount is a Navy EOD technician stationed at WRNMMC awaiting a medical board determination for bipolar disorder. He deployed to Africa, Iraq, and Afghanistan from 2006-2008. His poetry helps him cope with the extreme highs of his disorder.

Hey Mom

By Debra Moore Newell

They taught him to march
They taught him to shoot
They dressed him up in a soldier suit

A fine figure in Class A’s crossed the parade field
And a handsome young man boarded a bus
But all I could see was my little boy
Off on his country’s mission

Now I rush home to check the mail
Hoping for a glimpse of his handwriting

I stop breathing each evening at 5 as I
Search the news praying he won’t be there

And the doorbell scares the hell out of me

My hands are chaffed from wringing
My knees are bruised from kneeling

My child stands on a wall
In a place where even the weather is hateful
And I count each agonizing moment ’til he’s home

My mind wanders, searching, remembering…

He playfully bounds up the stairs,
His lanky frame taking them two at once.

“Hey Mom, I just finished this great book…”

“Hey Mom, want to go to a movie with me?”

“Hey Mom, can I take you out to lunch?”

“Hey Mom…”

“Hey Mom…”

My heart aches.

My soul weeps.

My mind screams…”Oh God!…” no other
Words or thoughts come to form my prayers…
“Oh God!…”

I long for the sound of his footsteps on the stair
…to hear him sing out…

“Hey Mom…”

Debra Moore-Newell is the mother of an only child. Brandon was in the MO Army National Guard’s MP battalion for six years. He served two tours of duty in Afghanistan. He is now majoring in English and creative writing at George Mason University in VA and is still considering a career in the U.S. Army. Debra’s father is a retired WO4 from the LA Army Reserves. Her father served 18 years in the LA Army National Guard followed by 22 years in the LA Army Reserves. Her nephew SGT Ted Moore Jr, recipient of the order of St. George, is now stationed in Germany after two tours in Iraq and two tours in Afghanistan. Her brother James was a tank driver in the TX National Guard. Debra has made a living in graphic arts, photography, marketing, and journalism for 40 years. Now that she is retired, she is spending more time on poetry, prose, and journaling.

Presumed Pain

By Matt Pruitt

insist my sanity gone I become progressively unstable,
resist nationality, war zone lonely and freedom forever fatal
no more fears, I hear screaming from those men despite reality postwar
no more tears, I hear God laughing at my pain P.T.S.D lasting evermore

no one in this world to trust when you’re unable to trust yourself
drowning found favorable to adjust after conforming to loneliness
hyper-vigilance, forever paranoid ensured survival never letting my guard down
abandonment, forsaken by friends alone inside the darkness where death is found

excessive execution presumed by guilt, punishment for crimes committed postnatal
compassion performed positives built, survival an idea at times thought inconceivable
death was necessary for my body to make it home, mind’s a mercenary stuck in that combat zone
Death before Dishonor respect spent wishing, words I lived by with only Death Before missing

Matt Pruitt received his GED soon after turning 18 his junior year of high school, and spent part of what would have been his senior year in Iraq. He attended college but personal reasons have caused him to put education on hold. He writes about both pre- and post- deployment personal issues, experiences, and views.

Posted

By Bradford White

Where was I in that fog,
when I first heard the hooves
thundering alongside unflashing apparitions?
When I felt its nares exhaling
molten atmosphere in hammered puffs
upon my neck?

Where was I,
when I turned and turned
and turned through that glowing sulfur
turning to see myself once again, a boy
in the wind listening for spring,
watching the lake rippling toward him?
“Very much like my mother’s hand
smoothing the wrinkles from newly pressed sheets,”
I once recalled to my wife in her hospital room. Read more

To My Mother

By Elizabeth Chance

You, too, my mother, read my rhymes
For love of unforgotten times,
And you may chance to hear once more
The little feet along the floor.

Elizabeth Chance served for eight years in the U.S. Army Reserve as a postal clerk, including one year under Operation Iraqi Freedom stationed on Camp Udari, Kuwait.  Elizabeth writes mostly poetry, but also dabbles in non-fiction. She is currently a sixth grade science teacher in Orlando, Florida.

His Last Name is GOSTISHA

By Greg Hoover

The boy from Santa Clara
smoking a red pipe,
had his young nose high in the air
opening a military door;
he found no answer there.
The Stars and Stripes were on the floor
with columns of black and white,
glorifying war;
but that didn’t make it right.
Some distance from Saigon
a dusty helicopter pad:
armed men with survival minds;
but that didn’t make them bad.
And man he loved his tobacco
sucking an Italian stem
he shot me through with questioning:
“was it US or was it THEM”?
This boy from California
on a beach near Malibu
still remembers the crying girl
who stumbled without a shoe
and the child without her skin
and a boy without his head
down by the water buffalo’s blood
and all three were dead.
We went camping at Big Sur,
walking the tide line without socks.
He cried on the drive there
and when we rested on the rocks.

Greg Hoover was an Army clerk stationed at MACV Headquarters in Saigon, South Vietnam, in 1969.  From the early summer of 1970 until his return to America in 1971, he was with Advisory Team 95 in Tan Hiep.  His poetry continues to be a reflection of his own experiences and of the many stories other young soldiers would have to share.

Apache

By William Adler

The black
Flutter whirls
Above the sharp clack-clack…
Rocks
And slender moon-shadows
collapse across my path
Beautiful machines—
passing in the perfect night’s
clear sky.

William Adler currently serves on active duty in Fort Irwin, California. He has served in Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq, and most recently, Afghanistan. When time allows he captures some of his experiences, and those of others, in short prose, or poetry. Originally from Marshfield, Massachusetts he chose a career of soldiering after college graduation but someday hopes to return to the Northeast to teach.

Twin Tower Response

By David Pointer

She shows pictures of an Iraqi billboard
Saddam Hussein riding in a fiery chariot,

her late brother emailed all these pictures
before his humvee floorboard exploded

grief entombs us like a shared grave as I
pass back the increasingly heavier photos,

pungent burning metal melting our way,
faltering, we pokerface for any new façade

Invisible Jewl

It was time to tuck in all
rear echelon office pogues,
Bill Jewl had his sniper
graduation tale to share,
Carlos Hathcock had come
to bless all bullets built
for cerebral hemispheres
or those trained to trigger
on urban enemy snipers
annihilating intel or
stupidity or other life
forms in between

David Scott Pointer is the son of a piano playing bank robber who died when David was 3 years old. David later served in the Marine military police. In 2010, his poetry collection “Warhammer Piano Bar” had three poems nominated for The Pushcart Prize.

Rear Support

By Suzanne Rancourt

The Reticent Veil

This is really true.
I never had the grief wiped away
with White Eagle feathers or songs sung
or special foods prepared.

It is true that I dreamt you were sick and dying
and I awoke saying, “This can’t be true.”
But when our Bear Clan brother came and said it was so
the grief appliquéd itself to my heart
as varicose webbing and loss
which I added to all the many losses
that came and went before you
and they all came back at Ceremony Read more