ANTHEM FOR DOOMED YOUTH

by R.W. Rhodes

  after the war poem of Wilfred Owen

In Texas we still prize our purebred cattle

   while monstrous Leftists plot to take our guns.

For us a rifle's like a baby's rattle,

   with cartridges we measure out in tons.

Our cemeteries are such peaceful places.

   And there are countless young in other schools,

so we can just forget these names and faces.

   Let none restrict our guns by stricter rules.

We'll light more candles and repeat more prayers,

   and freely arm more boys, and one and all.

A maniac not armament's the slayer,

   as on our kids we place a bloody pall.

The floral tributes in the heat turn rotten.

And by the dusk these dead will be forgotten.

R.W. Rhodes was a teacher for over 40 years before retirement. His classes ranged from global religions to death & dying. He published a series of hand-crafted books, many for children, with The Catbird-on-the-Yadkin Press in North Carolina.

THE SAME RULES APPLY

by Sam Barbee





Ruddy scar protracts the kept
thatch. Rusty shovels propped
as the backhoe heaves beside
the Common Grave: so many
paupers, so many people.

Pine box as caress, no time
for a tight-lipped benediction.
Spray of silt for mantles of boroughs,
and heights and neighborhoods.
No time for individual petitions.

No last kiss, or cross. Veterans
without flags or rifles on this
drab afternoon of a drab dawn.
Trees along the river, quiet field
where pigeons do not bother.

Death’s centrifugal angst plotted
within the City’s adaptable aura.
Time to seal today’s thawing dead.
The diesel throttles up. PPE-clad
laborers, leather palms tight.

Topsoil chokes off creeds, and
rings and rosaries, worry beads.
Distant tugboats sail the Hudson.
Gulls spiral behind their churning
murk, below pinwheels of gray clouds.

Sam Barbee’s poems have appeared Poetry South, The NC Literary Review, Crucible, Asheville Poetry Review, The Southern Poetry Anthology VII: North Carolina.  His second poetry collection That Rain We Needed (2016, Press 53) was a nominee for the Roanoke-Chowan Award as one of North Carolina’s best poetry collections of 2016.

MEMORIAL DAY COMES

by Howard Winn

Memorial Day is an American federal holiday. It honors those who have died while serving, but it also kicks starts the summer season and has become a weekend-long shopping extravaganza in the US. The holiday itself is the last Monday in May. So, this year, it is May 27, but most of the sales start the Friday before or even sooner. Nearly every retailer is holding a Memorial Day Weekend sale, where you can find great bargains on everything from grills and washers to TVs and laptops. Here are some of the best US deals and promotions we've spotted so far. —Pocket-lint, May 24, 2019

and our heroic leader having escaped
to Japan for a democratic or rather a
Republican weekend also thanks some
deity for his bone spurs that turned
him into the fake battle equivalent hero
while this weekend holiday sends the bargain
hunters to the holiday sales  and the thankful
condition of not needing to work on Monday
while lessor politicians hold events to honor
the "boys and the girls" who sacrificed so much
often including their lives in these old men's wars
which the children fight and die in so that
military cemeteries fill with accidental heroes
where the survivors some in their doddering age
can be remembered for a moment between the
shopping forays  which is what holidays are really for
in this current culture of money and power


Howard Winn publishes widely in literary journals such as the Hiram Poetry Review  and Valley Voices Journal. His novel has been published by Propertius Press.

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.