Sgt. Leonard W. Adams

Hero

While you were wailing
in your newborn crib
I was tuned into
the Mets and Red Sox,
watching with my mom,
and we thought the ball
moving through Buckner's
legs was the greatest
and worst thing that could
happen between us,
that a sport that could
split a mom and son
must have no value
or mean everything.

When you were seven
I left for college,
me and my mother
on the sidewalk turned
around a corner,
her quivering lips,
my sister honking
the horn. In what world
should a parent be
separated from
their child by such
distance? Not like this.
We cried for how long
we would have to drive
to see each other.

In this incursion
I want to debate
policy, theory,
the potential use
of military
force as a method
for encouraging
the spread of freely
renewable, made
by the people for
the people and of
the people regimes,
a debate about
the sword and the word,
and with what we lead.

Unfortunately,
people are dying,
and being slaughtered,
and placed in harms way,
and more turned into
killers who suffer
a bit each moment
they are under siege,
away from their homes
and kept from mothers
who love them, fathers
who wish their children
could be farmers, work
in a factory
or a skyscraper.

I load up my car,
a full tank of gas
and head out to work,
forgetting to call
home, tell my mother,
who I know worries,
how much I miss her,
and miss the ballgames
we use to sit down
together to watch,
the smell of popcorn
with salt and butter,
the crack of the bat
and thump of a ball
felled into a mitt.

So, as much as talk
intrigues me, it's not
my own enjoyment
or mental challenge
I here seek. Instead
I'll call you hero
and your Mom, goddess,
who gave birth and raised
such a sweet child
who would dedicate
their fate to winning
a fair victory
against an unfair
enemy. Hero,
that relevant word.

thom ingram

Spc. Clarence Adams III

i saw you

darkness still
you broke the veil
of dark -

i saw you -
every inch of you -
all of everything

of you -
it was perfect -
perfect -

i was full with
your light -
the light shining

through you
when i went
& where too

you can
see me now -
i

wait
blind to
transgression -

i wait
in your
for your

perfection -


by luc simonic

Sgt. 1st Class Brent A. Adams

A name is called,
a single bell tolled,
reminding us of one
young, unproven life
laid down for the freedoms
we have come to view as an entitlement.

What of that one life's entitlement‹
to a long life, filled with love,
to children and homestead,
to meaningful work and deep faith,
to reach an age that encourages reflection on a life well-lived.

Can we honor this young soldier enough?
Can we ever make sense of this loss?

Amanda J. Smith

Sgt. Brandon E. Adams

Shane E. Gilreath

Pvt. Algernon Adams

THE UNKNOWN SERVICE

This is the last shirt I will ever fold.
Here is my armless sleeve,
my face huddled up next to you,
my memory wound on the forever
replay of a grieving heart.
Here is a medal to honor
my blank chest, my shot weapon.
Here is the Humvee humming
into endless summer.
Here are my tears
folded into my body.
Here is your joy
pressed into an unplucked flower.
Here is the single rain drop
disguised as an unused sorrow.
Here is the many-tongued
denial of a mission, the lost
taste of a mother's cookie,
a father's last tool left vacant
in the vacant lot of an old garage,
heart-stopped, deadly
only to the dead
dis-re-membering.

Stop them in an alley.
Give away the clothes.
The stray cats flee
like shrapnel on a weak
horizon. All the blinds
gone bad, the future
sabotaged by a sutured smile.

Here is the last letter
I will ever write you
buried in the armor
of irony, the lit fuse
of democracy, burning
(o' burning!) for you.

Lorna Dee Cervantes

Capt. James F. Adamouski

If I Could

If I could wrap
a flag around my shoulders
like the wings
of an angel
I'd fly to you
right now.

If I could flip
love letters like
pennies
up to heaven
I'd write to you
a hundred times a day.

If I could ring all the church
bells at once, in morse code
I'd beg god each night
at 6 o'clock

to send you
back to me.

-Michelle M. Buchanan

Staff Sgt. Raymond J. Plouhar

Independence Day

In the fireworks a number of stars,
counted deaths, your 30 years among them.
Your nebula gone from Orion,
we celebrate our freedom without you.

Kathy Paupore

Sgt. Jose M. Velez

The Sand Kiss

I could write a poem of alien sand
where water is the sweetest touch,
where MacDonald's golden arches
and John Wayne cast no shadow
and the beach of the Western frontier
burns forever without the respite of ocean.

I could write a poem of reporters,
camera bulbs exploding, firing questions,
planting microphones to spout official party lines.

Men in flowing robes beneath headwear
announcing their usurpery of God
weilding official party lines like scriptures,
papal blessing kissed
like a bruise from snake lips,
as righteous as jihad.

But the poem I'm writing is of a mother,
waking from the sound of carrion wings
flapping dark knives across the sun,
to realise it's the fan ticking sweat
from the mattress where she lays listening
for her son's tread on the stair,
remembering her fingers
on the silk bristle of his army-cut hair.

Rae Pater

Spc. Genaro Acosta

The call

One day I glanced
and I perceived that I saw
a man on a bench that wept
while I swept

Inquired of him
I approached and I asked
What was so sad
what was so bad?

"My son has died
in a land far away
In the army was he
and my heart always be.

I weep not for
his passing you see
but I reflect on his life
of his joy and his strife

a troubled lad
was he in his youth
but joy did he find
assisting, to be kind

I'm weeping you see
from a post have I here
telling his deed that was so brave
written by the family he did save."

I went my rounds
sweeping the ground in silence
thought did I no ill can befall
when our children heed and answer the call.

jd bowling

1st Lt. Scott M. Love

Letter from a Soldier to His Daughter
(A Found Poem)

Vina, I had a dream
with you in it the other night.

We were at the beach and we made
a gigantic sand castle. A castle with candy

cane stripes and we climbed to the top
of the tower. From there, we could see far

out to sea. You told stories about friendly
rhinos and magical forests and adventures

on the moon and I listened and laughed.
The sky turned pink, then orange.

When the winking stars came out,
we climbed down out of the tower and walked

on the sand with no shoes on. I love you
Vina, I had a dream.

Lois P. Jones