The streets are full, the highways are flooded.

Shawn has seen hurricanes. He tells his classmate this
huddled under a desk. Got him third  at last year’s
Science Fair. The trick is the bottle, he says.
Bobby knows this, but he does not say so.

Shawn explains that some were never meant to hold
that kind of power. Bobby’s grandfather was
Creole and like the old cliché he never learned
to swim. Shawn was two years old when Ike

wrote that he sometimes punched Tina to the ground
without thinking. He is too young to understand
irony. But some lessons come early. Bobby knows this,
but he does not say so. He will wait until the waves

break against the schoolhouse.

* Published in DASH, Spring 2009

 

Introduction to Literature, Spring 2008

A good soldier, he sits, jaw clenched. He will never break
his gaze, red lines wind across storm-doors cracked
and weathered like the sanded trigger finger
that twitches during free writes.

He picks his words with careful precision,
chooses not to respond when a platinum blonde
in the back row proclaims that the war he still fights
is not quite as bad as headlines might have us believe.

But news tickers say nothing of the boy blown in half
by sandcastle grenades or a quiet student
perched where lines cross.  

Lightning erupts, another fleck turns to glass,
claymore mines sing a Dear John chorus.
Class is dismissed. He squares his shoulders
and confides that his wife left when he couldn't
lock the nightmares in the closet.  

A two-tour medic, he still pulls back
the familiar ghost in his dreams.
He saw the kernel implanted in earth
before it popped his best friend into pieces.
He says he never found the letter he promised to send
the kid’s sister, that he improvised a simple goodbye.  

And though it has caused a few folks
to disregard battle,
he is grateful for the splintered body
some photojournalist forgot
to take a still-shot of.

* Forthcoming from Secret Press