TROMPE-L’OEIL

by Suzanne Morris

Whenever I look at the

portrait of him 50 years ago

peering out from beneath

the smart billed cap

of his U.S. Army

dress uniform,

his eyes seem fixed on

grim reality:

he was drafted just before

his 25th birthday

during a war that he

already suspected

we should not be fighting,

and the casualties were

mounting at an alarming rate.

What a relief when he was made

a levee clerk in the Medical Corps,

posted at Fort Lewis, Washington.

Yet... sending others into action

while remaining safely behind

left its own set of scars.

Long after the war was over,

he suffered nightmares

of being under fire in Viet Nam.

I would lay beside him in the dark,

transfixed as he described

in terrifying detail

the first-hand experience of

a combat veteran.

This year I watched the

Memorial Day Concert on PBS,

with patriotic music and

stories of valor—

a resounding tribute to all who had died

defending American ideals

over the last 250 years.

By the time the show closed

with a haunting rendition of Taps

I was clutching his picture

against my heart,

knowing how grim

his face would be

had he lived long enough to see

the abdication of those ideals

by a President afflicted with

gilded bone spurs,

and thinking ahead to the

taxpayer-financed military parade

scheduled in Washington, D.C.

on June 14th,

a faux tribute to the U.S. Army that is

sure to make Trump’s pal Vladimir

red-faced with envy.

Anyone who dares to crash Trump’s

45-million-dollar birthday party

will be met with great force

as in the case of the protests

against his immigration raids in L.A.,

drafting U.S. troops

to engage in a war

they should not be fighting.

Suzanne Morris is a novelist with eight published works, and a poet. Her poems have appeared in online journals including The New Verse News and Texas Poetry Assignment, and anthologies including The Senior Class - 100 Poets on Aging (Lamar University Literary Press, 2024). A native Houstonian, she has resided in Cherokee County, Texas, since 2008. 

QUARANTINE AUBADE

by Juditha Dowd

"Lifeline" by Pascal Campion

The trucker is hauling food. We often hear him down on
the river road around this hour, hitting his Jake brakes,
slowing his rig on the curves. The sound bounces up and out,
finds us here on College Hill—wide-awake at four o’clock,
trying to return to sleep. He pauses at the highway ramp,
crosses the river, picks up speed. Soon he’ll unload at a market,
where workers rush to stock the shelves, where items spurned
for years are in demand: dry beans, yeast and prunes.
And here in the dark I’m my grandmother’s little girl again,
helping to squeeze red dye into bags of oleomargarine, waiting
to eat the biscuits she’ll take from her small white oven
while she listens to the radio, hopes there may be a letter today
from my uncle in the Army. Always the waiting. For the
the morning paper, twice-daily mail. Always we want news.
Bless our neighbor leaving now for what must be essential work.
Beams from his headlights circle the room. Birds are beginning
to stir, recalling those childhood mornings when I rose ahead of
my family, roused by their chorus, lifted into the dawn on wings.
After breakfast I’ll weed radishes we planted on a day that seems
like years go. Despite a killing frost, they’ve sprouted leaves.
Light is on the way. See how the air is whitening? That there’s
food … and those who must be fed. No certainties but these today.

Juditha Dowd’s latest book is Audubon’s Sparrow, a verse biography in the voice of Lucy Bakewell Audubon, out this month from Rose Metal Press. She has contributed work to many journals and anthologies, including Poet Lore, Poetry Daily, Spillway, Ekphrasis, Rock & Sling, and Florida Review.

DEATH AND SALVATION IN NEW HAMPSHIRE

by George Salamon

'A cremation urn was donated to the Salvation Army Family Store in Portsmouth [NH] with an engraving on the bottom that reads “Richard L. Pettengill 1929-1981.” . . .  According to an obituary that appeared in . . . the Exeter News-Letter, a Richard L. Pettengill, of Newmarket died at age 52 on Oct. 18, 1981. The obituary described him as a brick mason who served with the Army in Germany and Korea.' —Seacoastonline, October 22, 2017. Photo by Rich Beaychesne / Seacoastonline.

He was a brick mason
Who served with the Army.
Death ended his pain and his life,
But his life was not concluded by his death.
He cares not whether marble adorns him,
His soul was brought across the stream
Where, at last, man ambition scorns.
In death, he calls no place his own.
Let us instruct ourselves to be still
When we should.
He was a brick mason
Who served with the Army.


George Salamon lives and writes in St. Louis, MO. He served with the Army.

ODE TO THE GOD OF FRAYED WIRES

by Megan Merchant 

High speed flash bird flight photo by R. W. Scott via Pinterest

How terrible it is to pretend
that god has a hand in it,

that he built windows into the river,

that the man I lay with is his image,
hums divine,

and that the smallest deaths
are trade-ups—

child-soldiers for his army,
collecting their milk-teeth in a jar.

I wake to the news of bombs,
and a flight of cardinals

from my window that sees
only miles into the world—

their red breasts choking the light.

I have to imagine that his hands
shook at the bomb’s final inspection,

frayed one of the wires, so that
it stunted, landing as an ache,

and not a shattering.

But also that he cursed the blessing
of foresight,

the all-knowing ruin
that no one saw coming,

soundless as a wintered sun.

Megan Merchant lives in the tall pines of Prescott, AZ.  She is the author of two full-length poetry collections: Gravel Ghosts (Glass Lyre Press, 2016 Best Book Award), The Dark’s Humming (2015 Lyrebird Prize, Glass Lyre Press, 2017), four chapbooks, and a forthcoming children’s book with Philomel Books. She was awarded the 2016-2017 COG Literary Award, judged by Juan Felipe Herrera, the Poet Laureate of the United States.

CREATIVE ANACHRONISM

by David Chorlton

The Society for Creative Anachronism is an international organization dedicated to researching and re-creating the arts and skills of pre-17th-century Europe. Members, dressed in clothing of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, attend events which feature tournaments, royal courts, feasts, dancing, various classes & workshops, and more. --SCA

A man who died five minutes back
is standing at the action’s edge
and watching his army regroup
for another charge.
                              The war begins
in February, he says, as pennants
wave in Sunday sunshine
and dust clouds are rising around
the bright warriors
                             in the park. You see
someone in black and red you want
to kill him, that’s how it is. Today
it’s only practice for when
the forces to gather at Queen Creek.
The rules say that if you’re hit
where the armor doesn’t cover,
                                                you die.
See this? He indicates the metal
cut to fit around his upper arm. It’s
a Left Turn sign.
                        From the yellow eagle
on a dark blue shield
to banners in black, colors show who
is on one side and who on the other,
while the plan discovered today
                                                 is for
someone to infiltrate a crowd and stand
next to his enemy, looking so much
like him as to render violence
invisible until
                     the bomb explodes
leaving no chance for the dead
to move away from the action
to touch the Resurrection Pole and be
allowed to fight again.


David Chorlton came to Arizona in 1978 after living in England and Austria. He has spent more than three decades stretched between cultures and writing poetry, the pick of which has just appeared as his Selected Poems, from FutureCycle Press.