Good morning,
Here are some lines of poetry from our fall issue to begin your week:
We face the wall. We hang, we grip, / we strain, we shine, we rise, together, one more time. —In The Boot Camp Laundry Room, Nestor Wallers
The smell knocks and I spit out the taste of / Sand, and IED aftershocks rattle in my chest. —As I Clean My Rifle, J.B. Stevens
We drive avenues of Baghdad's garbage, hills pushed up / by battered, Sisyphean dozers into clots of crumpled / metal, rotted food, broken wood, clouds of flies hissing /—Surveillance of Landfill Village, Taji, Iraq, Steven Croft
Consider Iraq: where / does it end? The gulf / where it begins. / Who cares but those / who cannot forget / Afghanistan. —Forever Wars, Olivia Garard
We fight for some peace, but peace we have not. —We Fight For Peace, Z.S. Diamanti
I think of the other horse / we found here the summer before, / bursting with maggots and blowflies, / and I am lost —Ode To a Scar, Ben Weakley
My ceramic armor / still sits in an A-bag / covered in moon dust / crusted with sweat salt / In from patrol, / I used to remove / ACU pants and let them / stand in place of me / until they collapsed / under their own weight —To Read Death Like Braille, Cody Gallo
Read the poems in their entirety here.
Thank you for reading.
