The Day Room at Night: Haiku

By Susan Farese

Always on night shift
Out of bed to the day room…
Anxiety plus.

So I challenged them!
Put away that cigarette
And just chat with me.

Stories would abound
Sometimes, even tears would flow.
Cathartic rivers.

You wouldn’t believe
the magnitude, their missions
Poignant and heartfelt.

That was the 80’s
Before the world changed that day
September Eleventh.

Imagine, right now
Post-traumatic stress endured
And shared with no one.

So don’t be afraid
To reach out to a veteran
Pretend it’s night shift.

Susan Farese, MSN, RN, is president of SJF Communications, San Diego, which provides marketing/public relations, writing, social media, speaking and Legal Nurse Consulting services. Susan served in both the U.S. Navy and U.S. Army Nurse Corps, attaining the rank of Major. She is the author of the book Poetic Expressions in Nursing…Sharing the Caring (1993) as well as many articles. She is Director of Marketing and PR at San Diego Musical Theatre and is a member of SAG-AFTRA.

love sonnet to a new K-pot

by Randy Brown

You are a hard green bowl to crack apart,
inscrutable like Chinese egg-drop soup.
I trust to you my noodled self—not heart,
not groin—instead, my gray “brain-housing group.”
In old steel pots, we troops could cook our grub,
or use the liners as a pail for brass.
We washed our socks and cocks in helmet tubs,
and settled on those tuffets head or ass.
Your greater weight now floats on donut foam,
and creases lines across my forehead bared—
with leathered sweatband held in place like Rome
once clipped a crown of thorns, my skull is snared.
But, fragile shell that’s spun from Kevlar thread,
you have one purpose: Save my pounding head.

In 2010, Randy Brown was preparing for deployment to Eastern Afghanistan as a member of the Iowa Army National Guard’s 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 34th Infantry ‘Red Bull’ Division. After he dropped off the deployment list, he retired with 20 years of military service and a previous peacekeeping deployment. He then went to Afghanistan anyway, embedding with Iowa’s Red Bull units as a civilian journalist in May-June 2011. A freelance writer in central Iowa, Brown blogs about military topics at: www.redbullrising.com. His military-themed poetry and non-fiction has appeared in such literary venues as The Journal of Military Experience, Line of Advance, O-Dark-Thirty, The Pass In Review, Scintilla, and Volumes 1 and 2 of the Proud to Be: Writing by American Warriors anthology series from the Southeast Missouri State University Press.

I AM More

by Gerardo Novoa

I am more than a transition
An indistinguishable bellow
I am more than a lack of commitment
A sick heart

I am more than a studio apartment
Cordoned off in the city
I am more than just confidence
The medals tell me so

I am a man who committed to service
At uncertain times
I am a future who misses his friends
Sightless to help God sent

If the day is long
I will work through
And in the morning I will show,
I am more than a cigarette drag longed for,
Those familiar smells

I am more than I will try to be today
And more than I will be tomorrow

Gerardo Novoa served with Third Battalion Seventh Marines Kilo Company from 2006 to 2010. During that time he deployed to both Ar Ramadi, and Al-Qa’im Iraq. He now lives in Phoenix, AZ. He is currently attending Arizona State University, and works full time in the early childhood education field.

March 13, 2013 and all things considered

by Kate Holly-Clark

for Angelia Phillips, and other Gold Star mothers out there. Who also serve.

5475 diapers changed

and her game face is on because
today of all days
is five years to the day
her son came home
and today is another day
waiting tables and her son would have expected that
she would be doing this eternally
because mothers are eternal

2737 songs sung after a nightmare

thank you for your service
she says
to the gentleman in the retired military cap
as she takes his order
while the drumbeat sounds in her ear
like it does every year
the carefully measured steps the flag
with miliimeter precision spread
the stonefaced young men and women carrying the box
we are so sorry
we are not your son
it would be us if we could
he was one of us
this is the last and best we can do

3120 hours spent worrying weekend nights after he learned how to drive

you must be military, he says to her,
it’s the military who notice
and she smiles a little crookedly
and says
no i’m just an Army Mom.

9125 hours spent wanting to strangle him for wrangling with his siblings

thank him for his service for me
the old man says
and she escapes
into do you want coffee
and can I get you some syrup
at the other tables

438000 hours missing him since he’s gone, and counting.

On his way out, he asks her if her son is home.

They brought him home to me
five years ago today, sir, she says.
he makes it three steps

and salutes.

Kate is a jeweler, pet-mother, herbalist and storyteller living in semi-rural New Hampshire. She is the daughter of a USCG CPO 3rd Class (Ret.) and counts among her dearest friends veterans of at least three wars.

My Men

by Tom Griffen

All the talk about their women back home
quieted the platoon down. I disappear
to the last time I walked up the stones
to my girl’s stoop on Rush Street.
I had no words and that was OK.

Then one of the men, the usual one,
broke the silence with a roaring belch,
rousing us into a laughter more out of habit
than anything else. Our abrupt return triggered
more empty chatter, keeping us from thinking too much.

I wish for more silence.
I want to pretend to think I can smell
her perfume. I want to sneak through her
neighborhood of lavender-lined walkways.
Nighttime bushes with waxy leaves
that reflect the cushioned glow
of her folks’ orange porch light.
I want to make a final nervous left
toward her house, guided by the smell
of a casserole, no doubt something
she might make for our children
someday. I arrive at her doorstep
with honorable intentions that I’ll never
be able to reveal to my men.
They’ve here come to kill, and so have I.

Tom Griffen enlisted in the U.S. Army and provided rear support during Operations Desert Storm and Desert Shield. He is currently an MFA student of Poetry at Pacific University in Forest Grove, Oregon. His military writings are inspired by family history, namely his two grandfathers’ WWII and Korean War service (101st Airborne and U.S. Navy Medic, respectively), and his father’s experience in the U.S. Air Force during Vietnam.

Just for a Moment

by Virginia del Casal

Callie stood,
silently,
in the midst of the clamor,
striving to adjust
to the scene before her
and, just for a moment,
quailed
at the bodies and limbs flailed
but rallied quickly
at the 1MC’s strident salvo.
She hurried to a gurney
and straightened the linen just so,
waiting for another wave
of casualties,
either friend or foe.

Virginia del Casal was a Navy nurse and left after just under 8 years of active duty service. She uses writing, poetry in particular, as a means of putting into perspective her experiences while serving in the military.