SCHOOLYARD ATTRITION

by Zackary Ross Wiggs

Illustration by Golden Cosmos, The New Yorker, May 25, 2018

Texas alone has suffered 17 mass shootings this year and now lawmakers propose ‘battlefield trauma care’ facilities in schools. —The Guardian, May 13, 2023

Cut the flagpoles in two,

since they're at half-mast 

all year round

We could use the extra steel

to make more guns.

Build another Arlington,

for the brave school kids

gunned down in math class.

Hallowed ground filled,

with children full of hollow-points.

Too many thousand yard stares.

Bottlecap metals sewn on chests,

of children with kindergarten war stories.

Senior trips to graveside services,

for those gunned down at recess.

Zackary Ross Wiggs is a writer from Southeast Kansas. A recent creative writing master's graduate, when he isn't writing he is usually found absorbed in some show or book. His works have also been published in Unstamatic Press, Shacklebound Press, and The Joplin Toad. 

UNKNOWN SOLDIERS

by Paul Smith

Photography by David Jay from The Unknown Soldier. The Unknown Soldier is a series of large scale photographs of severely wounded young soldiers returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Shot by photographer, David Jay, The Unknown Soldier documents the lives and stories of these young men upon their return home. The Unknown Soldier will culminate in a nationally traveling exhibition. A documentary is currently in production.

One cannot count how many
Unknown soldiers lie hidden
Nor their monuments
From Arlington to Vitkov Hill
To Shevchenko Park
There are more unknown soldiers
Than poetry slams
More unknown soldiers
Than tattoo parlors
More than churches
Their voices silenced
Their bones
White and intumescent
If they could talk
They’d say
‘You don’t know us
But we know you
And we know each other
The earth has joined us
By a seam of metamorphosed rock
Running from Verdun to Leningrad
And all the places in between
And outside of
A road map of futility
That you think leads to
War memorials and museums
But instead
Leads to cemeteries
You don’t visit
Where the known among us are
And to libraries full of books
You don’t read
Pages white and visceral
Inviolate and untouched

Paul Smith lives near Chicago.  He writes fiction & poetry.  He likes Hemingway, really likes Bukowski, the Rolling Stones, Beatles, Kinks and Slim Harpo.  He can play James Jamerson's bass solo for 'Home Cookin' by Junior Walker & the Allstars.

THE ZERO OPTION

by Rick Gray

“Obama to Pentagon: Plan for ‘zero option’ in Afghanistan” --Aljazeera America headline, February 25, 2014

Doesn't include my friend Daryl, or my student Zohra,
or that guy at the end of the hall
with the ponytail and the funny shoes.

It doesn't include my class this afternoon
when we will attack the final act
of Romeo and Juliet.

It doesn't include the scruffy kid on the corner
who sells stolen tangerines next to a muddy white horse
or his circling gang selling chewing gum made in Saudi Arabia.

It doesn't include the butcher over there slitting that sheep's throat
or the sound of the man's boots pacing the roof above me with a gun
or my secret escape plans through the School for the Blind.

Come to think of it, the zero option
doesn't even include me, or anyone I really know,
or anything any of us have ever done in our ordinary lives.

We are those whose lives have not
been calculated into the numerical system
of my nation's Department of Defense.

And when our deaths come, as they must,
without flags or trumpets or Arlington,
some of us may still be in Afghanistan

where, with God's infinite mercy,
the streets will be undefined with blast walls or barbed wires
and the uncounted will stroll with minds as empty of war or worry as zeros.


Rick Gray has work currently appearing in Salamander and has an essay forthcoming in the book, Neither Here Nor There: An Anthology of Reverse Culture Shock. He served in the Peace Corps in Kenya and teaches in Kabul, Afghanistan.