Salt Ponds Pentecost

by Michael Lancaster

Kingfishers muttering furiously
Bordering the life of a family
Known in a clothes line
Of six pairs of jeans pinned
Upon a lifeline of wire
Stretched from weathered shed
To a post anchoring its
Occasional fabric burdens
As well as a line of tomato plants
Scrambling into spring
Amid the clarion wake-up
Call of red-winged blackbirds
Providing descant and the
Promise of indolent summer.

Mike Lancaster is a retired Army veteran, West Point Class of 1967, and a combat veteran helicopter gunship pilot with the 101st Airborne in Vietnam. Mike and his wife Ellen live on the Salt Ponds, just above Fort Monroe, in the Tidewater area of Virginia. Mike mostly writes poetry about Salt Ponds life and its spiritual quality, though two other volumes of poems and a good sketch of a novel are works in progress.

It Happened Anyway

by Eric Chandler

We bought fire extinguishers.
We changed the 9-volt batteries in the smoke alarms.
We even bought a rope-ladder.
It happened anyway.

We ate lots of fruits and vegetables.
We exercised.
We ran marathons.
It happened anyway.

We told them not to talk to strangers.
We picked them up at school on time.
We helicoptered just like we were supposed to.
It happened anyway.

We always wore our seat belts.
We made sure they wore theirs.
We obeyed the speed limit.
It happened anyway.

We drank lots of green tea.
We did the crossword.
We challenged our minds.
It happened anyway.

We got a dog.
We made sure all the locks worked.
We installed an alarm system.
It happened anyway.

We taught them the meaning of truth.
We taught them to work hard.
To take responsibility. To be themselves.
It happened anyway.

I boiled the oil.
I barred the doors.
I begged.
And it happened anyway.

The editors at Sleet Magazine nominated Eric Chandler’s creative nonfiction story “Chemical Warfare” for a Pushcart Prize. Some of his nonfiction was included in the anthologies Proud to Be: Writing by American Warriors (Volumes 2 and 3). He recently self-published a nonfiction e-book of his outdoor family adventures called Outside Duluth. He also self-published a short novel about a downed pilot in Afghanistan called Down In It. You can learn about his books and published fiction, nonfiction, and poetry at: http://ericchandler.wordpress.com/

The Army Thanks Its Troops

by Virgil Huston

Hot steel
Blazing sun
Sweat pours
Clothes soaked
Preparation
for war
Broken souls
get pink slips
in the combat zone
But they will first
finish their tours
Used up and
thrown out
Saves money
But not us
Betrayed and
bewildered
We trusted them
New crop
New breed
Unsuspecting
They can’t see
yet
Future ones
to be broken
and discarded
The Army way
to thank soldiers

Virgil Huston was an Army Signal Corps soldier who worked in computer systems administration in Iraq from 2004-2005. He also deployed as an Army contractor in Afghanistan in 2011 and to Iraq as a State Department contractor in 2012, performing electronics maintenance on elevated sensor systems both times. 

Sunday’s War

by A. M. Gwinn

He’s writing about the war, in the room
where the dim glow flashes and crackles
in his Sunday dinner. The children have
been sent to their rooms, drowsy and full.

But the metaphors refuse to coagulate
in the blood spilling like milk or curl
like the bodies, melting from the burn,
into snakes of esses and oh’s.

“Daddy!”

The screams rise like a tower, rip through
his chest as Titanic was opened to water.
From the room of painted butterflies and
faeries; wings unsinged and unfurled, pink
palms stretch upward, their eyes a church
service, lilting like baby birds, “Daddy, tuck us in.”

A.M. Gwynn is the daughter of a retired veteran. She writes poetry and short fiction. Her recent work will be featured in forthcoming issues of War, Literature and the Arts, Fiction Southeast, and Sleet Magazine. Her work has also appeared in Grey Sparrow Journal, Boston Literary Magazine, Nailed Magazine, and Muddy River Poetry Review. She resides in Germany.