Feb 18
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.
By Erik Goepner
“Where is he?” Shamshullah shouted. He reared his arm back ready to strike one more blow across Abdullah’s face. “Where is he, you son of a donkey?”
The sound of the first strike had startled the children playing nearby. Those who saw it did not believe Shamshullah could hit Abdullah so hard. Abdullah did not believe Shamshullah would hit him that hard. It was a tense moment between the fifty-year-old elder of this southern Afghan village and his twenty-something nephew.
“Uncle, I do not know. Please, let me make a telephone call. I’ll find out.” Read more
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
By Gregory James Shuck.
The old man sat at leisure on his front porch, in his favorite rocker, facing south. He was relegated to whittling now, having farm hands doing the milking. The air was cool for that time of year. He spied a figure coming in the morning sun. The figure had a familiar walk, not unlike his own. When the figure was recognized, it turned toward the rising sun in the east and pointed to three gates which the dairy farmer hadn’t seen before, but he was drawn by the light behind each, and he asked the figure which one was preferable to walk through, for the old man knew this is what he must do. The figure hesitated, and said each gate was to his liking, but he preferred the third, the one on the right.
The ensign watched as the boat lashes were being torn apart by the jolting collisions of the two landing craft, and knew that re-rigging the lashes to the T-Bitts would risk life and limb of the two decks hands from each boat, safe now in the engine rooms. He called them up to prepare the lashes, and only sent them forward when the hemp lines snapped. The boats had been lashed together to provide a steadier platform as the boats searched in vain for a larger carrier, and be safely tied on the large ship’s lee. Not normally the preferred manner, but this was a tenuous day, and these two boats were the only boats out in the tempest. Read more
Jan 2
By Molly Martin
The American Regional Embassy Office, called the REO (pronounced Río), in Kirkuk huddles near Chemical Ali’s former palace. We navigate the maze of barriers and gates under the high dome of the hot, pale blue and cloudless sky. I relax, turn the SAW heavenward and sit back in the turret sling as we roll through the last gate. Once in it’s my job to clamber out of the turret and guide the vehicle to its parking spot in the little gravel lot. I hitch up my gear. It weighs a mere 29 lbs. As I hope heavily down from the hood, I hold my wobbly helmet. It’s still missing the bolts in the back, so it’s held together by twists of 550 cord.
Considering that we can’t get re-supplied on toilet paper, the specialized bolts I need to make me combat ready are not forthcoming any time soon. Never mind that one of my two pairs of issued desert boots is the wrong size. Read more
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.
O-Dark-Thirty