"YOU BASTARDS BETTER NOT CUT MY ARM OFF"

1st Lt. Dawn Halfaker, June 19, 2004 Baquba, Iraq


by Terry M. Dugan


Dawn Halfaker is interviewed by James Gandolfini in the documentary Alive Day Memories broadcast on television on September 9, 2007. Her quoted words appeared in a news article in the Washington Post by Donna St. George on April 18, 2006, “Limbs Lost to Enemy Fire, Women Forge a New Identity.”


Maimed by war,
unconscious at Walter Reed Hospital
No other way to save her life, they said.
She lost pieces of herself in war.

“Get us out of the kill zone”
The female platoon leader yelled
When the rocket-propelled grenade
Exploded behind her.

“I didn’t want to know
What I looked like.”
Burns on her face, her arm missing,
Towel covered the mirror in her hospital room.

A basketball standout at West Point,
A commissioned army officer,
Wondering now how she could hold
A child close to her.


Terry M. Dugan's anti-war poetry has appeared in Women's Studies Quarterly, Poetry Ink, and New Verse News, and the Anthology of New England Writers 2008. She is currently finishing a graduate writing degree at Manhattanville College.

YOU MAY NOT UNDERSTAND

(TO THE TROOPS)


by Jim Bush


You may not understand why
I write what I write

You may not agree with it

You may think I'm unpatriotic
Or that I don't care

You may think
That I don't understand
Why you fight

You may think
That I don't understand
The threat

On the other hand
You may hear my words
And they may ring true to you

Perhaps you've seen the light

Maybe things have become
More clear now

Maybe now
You understand
My outrage

Maybe now
You see
How wrong it is
To send
American men and women
Into a war they can't win

Maybe now
You see
How wrong it is
To send
The pure in heart
To be corrupted by this war

Maybe now
You will believe me
When I tell you
That I have cried for you

Maybe now
You will forgive me
For caring this way
Whether you want me to
Or not

I have seen the damage of war
I have seen the damage
That even a "good war" can do

I have seen the damage
That a bad war can do

I have seen the damage
That this war has done

You may think you are fighting
For freedom

You may think you are fighting
To protect America

You may even believe
That you are fighting
For Jesus

I think you are caught
In a cross-fire
Between evil men

I think you have been duped
As many on the other side
Have been duped

I think you are a pawn
In an evil game
Of power and control

I think too many of you
Have died or been hurt
For the wrong reasons

I think too many innocents
Have died or been hurt
For no good reason at all

So I'll keep writing and crying
Even though you may hate me for it

And I'll keep protesting
Even though you think me wrong

And I'll keep caring
In my way
All the way
To the end

And if you start to hear me
Perhaps you'll choose to join me
And then, together
We can bring this bloody mess
To a final end

But

You may not understand


Jim Bush is a 60 year old, Vietnam-era veteran, currently living in Katy,Texas. He was raised in a military family. His father received the Silver Star for directing troops while under air attack at Clark Field in the Phillipines, survived the Bataan Death March, and spent three and a half years in a Japanese POW camp. He also received the Purple Heart for wounds received while a POW. Jim served as an army photographer in Okinawa and Korea. In 1987 he traveled to the war zones of Nicaragua with a veteran's group dedicated to stopping the Contra War.

HOME FROM IRAQ

by Howie Good

for Mikey O.

They said the Army would be good for you
supply the discipline you needed

and when you came back at 21
with a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart

there was a ceremony at the high school
with speeches and a color guard

and they renamed a park after you
and planted a tree but you didn’t know

how could you at the top of the hill
under a simple stone in the town cemetery


Howie Good, a journalism professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz, is the author of two poetry chapbooks, Death of the Frog Prince (2004) and Heartland (2007), both from FootHills Publishing. He was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize and is the featured poet in the Autumn 2007 issue of The Grand Rapids Literary Review.

KRISTIAN TELLS HIS STORY TO THE SUN AND THE MOON

by Bárbara Renaud González


To Pfc. Kristian Menchaca, from Houston , Texas , who was captured and brutally killed in Iraq on June 16, 2006.


I am the sun and moon
And forever hungry
To hear your story.
Your mother, did she not love you?
I bet your father abandoned
Both of you. Is that why
You went off to war?
Your mother’s crying now, won’t talk
To CNN.
They’ve told her how you died.
She knows you suffered,
But I know much more.
They say you became a man
In the Army. I say
They planned it so
You had no choice but
To die so they could sleep,
Without fear of sharing a little bread.
Help us, God, take Kristian.
Your story is an old one
But I’m still hungry. Come, sit beside
the sun and moon.


Bárbara Renaud González is a writer/journalist in San Antonio. In 2000, González received the Inter-American Press Association Opinion prize in Santiage de Chile for columns "that inspire community debate." In 2001, González was censured for opposing aggression in Afghanistan after 9/11. González' work has been published in newspapers, magazines, and anthologies.

COURTSHIPS

by Marcelle Kasprowicz


He is toeing ballerina-style
spinning his feathered skirt
like a top
The stage has been cleared
and the audience is perched
on an overhanging branch
perhaps sitting in rows of folding chairs
set up for the séance

No deep-throated calls
but cooing expected platitudes
sound bites

It's all in the length and curl of tail feathers

Spin Spin Spin
Make them dizzy
Make them quiver with anticipation
Explode into a sunburst of colors smiles

And that's where the resemblance ends

The Carola Parotia* plunges into his performance
with the wildest abandon
exposing pale flanks skinny legs
The Candidatus presidentialis
can't afford such candor

What unsightly features
might he be hiding
under his manicured flight feathers

* Bird of Paradise

Marcelle Kasprowicz was born in Niort, France. She received an M.A. from UT at Austin and is an Austin resident. She writes in English and French and also translates her French poems in English. In 2001 she was awarded first prize for her poem "House of Bones" in the Austin International Poetry Festival Anthology. She has had her poems published in Ascent, Aspiration, Farfelu, The Texas Poetry Calendar, the AIPF Anthologies, Gival Press, Languageandculture.net (on line). She is the author of Organza Skies, a book of poems about the Davis Mountains of West Texas, published in 2005.

INCENTIVES

by Rochelle Ratner


1.

Right out of school, can't find a job, and now the Army's offering $20,000 just to ship out quickly. Well, it's working – nearly 4,000 recruits in just three weeks. Except he and his friends go out drinking. His vision's too blurry for the fine print. First comes basic training, then comes more training, then comes $10,000. The rest is doled out over time. Get killed and it stops right there. Lose an arm or leg and forfeit twenty percent. Fingers and toes barely matter. If the head is lost, the remaining bonus is forfeited. Here is a soldier no longer fit to serve.


2.

No one defines what losing your head means.


3.

First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes Susie with a baby carriage. Okay, maybe not marriage. Still, the new soldier, actually a kind, caring teenager, would really like to help her out.


4.

Should both testicles be lost, the remaining portion will be passed on to enlistee's children


5.

Senator Dan Patrick has a great idea: $500 for any woman who elects to bring a child to term and put it up for adoption. That's about what she'd spend for an abortion. And there are so many Texas families desperate to provide loving homes for children they can scarcely conceive of. State taxes can cover the costs. There are a lot of rich Texans. 75,000 women in Texas had abortions last year. “If this incentive changes the mind of five percent of those women that’s 3,000 lives," Mr. Patrick said. "Almost as many people as we’ve lost in Iraq."


Rochelle Ratner's latest poetry books include Leads (Otoliths Press, 2007), Balancing Acts (Marsh Hawk Press, 2006), Beggars at the Wall (Ikon, 2006) and House and Home (Marsh Hawk Press, 2003). She is the author of fifteen previous poetry collections and two novels (Bobby’s Girl and The Lion’s Share) both published by Coffee House Press). More information and links to her writing on the Internet can be found on her homepage.

IDAHO

by Chris Freifeld


Idaho, the joke's on you
you hunk of heartland,
home of hunters and rifles
and men.

"I am not nor have I ever been," he
said, "I am a tall senator, here is my wife.
We sing in the wheat colored choir on Sunday."

But turn away now,
turn away from the broken man.
The flag is in flames,
there's no time for the fallen.


Chris Freifeld is recovering from a 30 year career in psychiatric nursing somewhere in Southern California. Her poetry was, until today, universally unpublished. e-mail address: fern-hill(at)hotmail.com.

TO BE GUILTY OR NOT TO BE GUILTY, THAT IS THE QUESTION

by Earl J. Wilcox


Whether tis nobler to tell the truth,
fess up to it,
go ahead, unload to the wife,
let the kids in on it, too.

Call the Governor,
other Idahoans
who want to hear you say it,
let them all know the truth.
You could even call
the Senate Ethics Chair,
give him the skinny,
tell him how you really want
to come back to the Hill,
but somehow truth keeps getting
in your way.

Always hunkering around any
version of truth
you tell is that little problem
of the foot tapping,
the hand signal.

You know that version,
it’s in the transcript, dude,
where you told the truth to the cop in the next stall,
even if you have not yet told another single bring.

Except God.


Earl J. Wilcox founded The Robert Frost Review, which he edited for more than a decade. His poetry was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

ALL MY SON

by Deborah Geis


"For all the public drama of Arthur Miller's career—his celebrated plays (including Death of a Salesman and The Crucible), his marriage to Marilyn Monroe, his social activism—one character was absent: the Down-syndrome child he deleted from his life."

--"Arthur Miller's Missing Act" by Suzanna Andrews in Vanity Fair September 2007

Daniel
is not traveling tonight (or any other night)
on a plane:
he hasn't been off the grounds
since that time when he was seven
and he and that lady
who said she was his mother
took a drive to the beach--
she had a camera and took pictures
but only of the rocks.

Someone told him
that his dad writes plays.
He knows what that means--
he likes to play--
and sometimes he plays with the younger ones
though he's too old for dollhouses.
They have a family that bends
and he likes to make them
watch TV together.
And he also likes to write,
he can write his name:
one time he did it over and over
till the crayon broke
and there was no space left
on the big white sheet.


Deborah Geis is Associate Professor of English at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana. She has published several books and articles on contemporary drama. Her poems have appeared in First Class, Free Lunch, and Bellicose Lettres. She is also a (recovering) slam poet and was in the 2000 National Poetry Slam.

SURPRISE VISIT

by Martha Deed


“How’s morale?” I ask upon my arrival at your house
on a surprise visit that did not require an invitation
Have you stopped fighting with your brothers
as I demanded after I sent in the neighborhood
bullies to take away your toys? You who choose
to leave your chamber, I’ll show you what fun is–
It’s sneaking off in the night with Condi and her buddies
leaving Laura to sulk at home with her “pinched nerve”
from doing you-know-what with me,
and don’t you just love it – the Tony phony schedule
to throw you news bastards off the scent
and Air Force One dark with excitement
in its hangar– waiting just for me
But just because we’re having fun at your expense
don’t think you can photograph my bad side
see me salute our happy troops thrilled to play
Hide and Seek Cops and Robbers in the sand
and the sign – Oh, God, I love the sign stuck there
waiting for me just in case I come to visit again
like Thanksgiving


Martha Deed's chapbook, 65 x 65, was recently published by Peter Ganick's small chapbook project (December 2006). Her poems have recently appeared in Shampoo, unlikelystories, 3by3by3, 21 Stars, and Iowa Review Web (with Millie Niss). Her website is www.sporkworld.org/Deed.

I STEPPED IN SOME SHIT

for G. W. Bush


by Jerome Gold


I stepped in some shit. It was round, not like
a cow's or a buffalo's, but like a
bear's, or a human being's. It wasn't
like a dog's. It was too thick, too perfectly
round, round without seam. It had too much heft
to be a dog's. Or so it appeared.

It could have been a human's, or a bear's.
It was about a foot long and, as I say,
almost perfectly round. There were no
wrinkles, no indentations. There were
no imperfections, none to be seen on the
surface, at least. The coloring was
uniform, a rich brown.

I was out walking. Taking a stroll
following my afternoon coffee.
It was a nearly glorious day: sun,
large, white clouds to make you think sailing
ships and the sea, a breeze with the
occasional gust to, say, six knots.
Light jacket weather; a thin windbreaker.
And there it was, on the sidewalk. (It was
probably not a bear's.)
I saw it.
I stepped in it.


Jerome Gold is the author of several books, including Sergeant Dickinson (a novel), Prisoners (poetry), and How I Learned That I Could Push the Button (personal essays). He is a founder of Black Heron Press, a literary book publisher.

JUST BECAUSE HE'S PARANOID...

by Bill Costley

A paranoid boyhood friend of a friend
recently told him he's certain Dubya
won't willingly quit the Oval Office.
Instead, he’ll precipitate an incident
calling for martial-law; detention camps
hidden in the landscape will open up,
run by Minutemen ready to lock up
every kind of dissident. Kommandant
Karl Rove will greet them at the gates.
Gonzales' resignation was the signal.


Bill Costley serves on the Steering Committee of the San Francisco chapter of the National Writers Union.

OF HUGS AND HAND SIGNALS

by Earl J Wilcox


There was a brief, shining moment in Iowa
yesterday when two honest gay men openly

sealed their marriage with a hug and a kiss,
under a tree, before the public, during the few

minutes prior to a judge retracting his
permission for the men to wed in that state.

There was a brief, cloudy moment in a stall
in a Maryland airport men’s room this summer,

when a less honest U S Senator tapped his
foot against another’s, placed his hand under-

neath the toilet wall, giving an undercover cop
authority to arrest the Senator for his hidden acts.


Earl J. Wilcox founded The Robert Frost Review, which he edited for more than a decade. His poetry was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

SEPTEMBER

by David W. Rushing


It wasn’t so much the destruction of buildings
or even the searing loss of life
as much as it was the undeniable presence of evil
that day and the next
as the world took an eye for an eye
and the devil laughed and God got ready.


David W. Rushing's articles and poems have appeared in over 100 magazines. His two chapbooks are Unrequited Love, Unfinished Lives and Appearances, and his first work of non-fiction prose will be out in the summer of 2008.