PURPLE HEART ARMY VETERAN SELF-DEPORTS

by Morrow Dowdle

The quiet girl I’d admired on the playground

defended me against a boy with rough grasp  

and bad breath. Ended with her knee scraped, 

 

dark with embedded mulch. The boy 

ran, exiled from swing and slide.

That spring, I gave her a locket 

 

from the five and ten, real sterling plate. 

Not a partial heart, with zig-zag edges, 

I trusted her to take the whole. And wasn’t she 

 

the bearer of some universal principle:

What you shed for someone incurred a debt.

In the military, I spilled not one red drop—

 

still, the discharge, honorable. Still, years later, 

thanked by strangers. What did I do? 

Sat in the clinic. Tried to save the wounded 

 

from an aftermath I could hardly fathom. 

There is a man, now, up in the air. 

A slick plane flung between continents.

 

My friend and I pricked our thumbs with a needle, 

pressed them together. Citizens then, of each other. 

Not enough to make a man homeless,

 

he must be motherless, childless as well.

His body belongs to no country.

His body gone, with its generous blood.

Morrow Dowdle is the author of the chapbook Hardly (Bottlecap Press, 2024) and has work appearing or forthcoming from New York Quarterly, RATTLE, ONE ART, and Southeast Review. They run a performance series which features historically marginalized voices and are an MFA candidate at Pacific University.

CAN YOU LET THE CICADA BE BEAUTIFUL?

by Morrow Dowdle

When one, newly broken from its honeyed shell

tests flight’s imperative,

   whirs, strikes your skin,

will you turn to see who’s there?  Don’t look up.

Don’t think you deserve only what’s lofted.

This holy spirit lies on asphalt on its back.

 

Reconsider where it comes from, this fear

of what that can’t harm us. 

        Why do we hate it?

Turn it over if you are brave enough to touch it. 

Braver still if you will lift it.  Make your fingers

delicate as chopsticks on a robin’s egg.

Don’t pitch it in the grass.  Let it cling

to your wrist,

           its legs’ gentle sharpness.  You are just

another kind of tree, flesh-barked.  It crawls

your arm, and that’s when you see its eyes of red,

such a red we could never manifest—

not the richest lips, not the sex in its engorged

glory.  And its wings,

           its wings when they unstick,

intricate as any dragonfly, yet you’ll never find them

enshrined in silver, glass, or amethyst.

Are you brave enough, now, to allow it

to approach your head?  You have no xylem, no sap

for it to taste.  Nothing

                                     to dread.  But would you kiss it?

Could you name it the most modest of angels,

if much disgraced?  An angel must have wings,

but surely, it can wear any face.

 

Morrow Dowdle has poetry published in or forthcoming from New York Quarterly, Pedestal Magazine, Fatal Flaw, and Poetry South, among others. They have been nominated for the Pushcart and Best of the Net.  They edit poetry for Sunspot Literary Journal and host “Weave & Spin,” a performance series featuring marginalized voices. A former physician assistant, they now work as a creative writing instructor for current and former prison inmates. They live in Hillsborough, NC.