Where We Fight by John Grey

These are the options. Volunteer for another mission

with real desert and real snipers and real roadside bombs

or stay in his room, turn down the lights, guzzle beer after beer.

Of course, he could always date cheerleaders.

He was friendly with one or two before he signed up.

Pretty blondes in short skirts doing backflips in the end-zone.

But he’s lost their numbers.

He’s also lost the kid that scribbled them down.

Why not get a job? He had one stacking shelves in school vacations.

He could pick up where he left off, stacking coup cans

one atop the other, constructing the first Heinz skyscraper

in all of creation. But the damn thing toppled, crashed

to the floor, made a noise louder than a rear-ender.

And he was fired. So that wouldn’t work.

But he could always move back with his folks.

They’d take him in for sure. At least, they would if it was ten years ago.

But now, the choice is a nursing home or a cemetery.

So it’s sign up again or stay put.

Seek out the enemy in the company of your troop

or be the only doing it.

---

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Orbis, Dalhousie Review and 3rd Wednesday. Latest books, “Leaves On Pages” and “Memory Outside The Head” are available through Amazon.

Comments

Home by Jessa Forest

Home scratches at her shingles with tree branch fingers, pulls the air conditioning unit close to her grimy aluminum siding, and keens an empty song of mourning. We found her wandering the tornado snarled wild three months ago, starved and lonely. She doesn’t know how to take care of herself, you see? We fed her shards of dining room tables, kindling for the fireplace, and cast iron bathtubs clawed feet first. She was slow to recover so we gutted her plumbing, ripped out her nerves, and rewired the electricity. She let the water in every time it rained so we put a new roof on her and let her out for regular walks around the wolf pen. Let her mingle with the vultures, I said, let her feel useful and clean up the dead but no one wanted to listen. We found rot an mold in her corners, infused her insulation with antibiotics, and quarantined her for two weeks while she belched ladderback chairs, sofa cushions, wind chimes, and broken bookcases. She still has her bad days. After feeding time

“Are You So Tired Then, Stranger?” by Ace Boggess

—Dick Allen, “B&B” Wind exhausts with its icy fists. Knives of rain wear me down, & leaves in their helicopter swirls like leaflets dropped from a plane. October depletes me, & November. They’ve too much busyness. They send me spinning, dancing, lonely with the rake, the broom. I surrender, collapsing like an old barn, debris of me piling in a chair with clear view of the television. News is on. It spends me. Talk of politics, also. I’d like to shut up the voices that fatigue. They hum like a B-flat in the pipes. They bicker & scold, condemn. They expend me like carrying groceries up a flight of stairs until I’m too drained to care which side they’re on. --- Ace Boggess is author of six books of poetry, including Escape Envy (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2021), I Have Lost the Art of Dreaming It So , and The Prisoners . His writing has appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review, Notre Dame Review, Harvard Review, Mid-American Review, and other journals. An ex-c

Paths by O.T. Park

I like walking worn down tracks Where the beat of human feet Has steadily marked the time. Paths where trees eclipse the sky and where dabbled light anoints The knotted and gnarled ground. Long lanes scarred by raised roots Which form illegible inscriptions; Where vegetation creates a nave and the trail itself an endless aisle. A placid place that celebrates Feet moving in communion. --- O.T. Park lives and works in Guildford. He has had poems published in Eye Flash Poetry, The Dawntreader and The Cannon's Mouth.

Dear Reader

Search This Blog