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VIETNAM  WAR  POETRY
​
LOIS MARIE HARROD 

​​                        Dumb Fuck 

                        dying in friendly fire

                        You are someone's tragic supper, love apple moaning
                        as the fridge slams shut, six months gone and the June wedding trips
                        down the stairs, who will deliver it now, that child of yours, moths flit
                        the only streetlight on your street, the one you used to jiggle

                        to watch go out like a breath.

                        How were they to know you were in front of them,
                        your father, your brother, the mother who got away,
                        the pregnant one you emailed nearly every day? How did you get there
                        when you left them here choking down their beef?

                        Look at the gewgaws spread on your bed, the stuffed teddy,
                        the football, your velvet thighs gone in a quake of sundown sparrows.
                        They spell your short story, cheap cheep,
                        how light burst your downy belly, oh Achilles, how slippery

                        you were on the way out, thought you would always . . . be.

                        Now the quiet time, the past with the baby still
                        howling in the blanket. Didn’t that mother of yours wrap you in orange
                        to carry you from the car, afraid of deer hunters in the woods?
                        Weren’t there trumpet vines beneath your bedroom window

                        warning the hummingbirds? Wasn’t there an umpire crying OUT
                        to the boy breaking his own leg with his own bat?
                        Why didn’t someone tell you,
                        don’t wear red, white or blue during a turkey shoot. 


                        by Contributing Poet  Lois Marie Harrod   Copyright © 2014 
                        VWP 2015     First published by  FutureCycle.org  2014 

​

                        Post Traumatic Shock 

                                                "My love knows few words."   -   Gottfried Benn

                        My love knows few words.
                                    Knuckle. Pinochle. Gin.
                        Words of hand and body.
                                    No abstractions for him.

                        No knuckling down to play pinochle, gin
                                    Just wordless poker at the bar
                        No dark abstractions for him
                                    War brings a man only so far.

                        Standing speechless at the bar
                                    No beers of repentance for him.
                        Cross words brought him only so far.
                                    No puzzling notion of sin.

                        No regrets, no penitence,
                                    No words nailing hand and foot.
                        No shame. No contrition. No sin.
                                    My love knows few words. 


                        by Contributing Poet  Lois Marie Harrod   Copyright © 2015 
                        ​VWP 2015     First published in  VietnamWarPoetry.com 
                        Bio:  Lois Marie Harrod's   13th and 14th poetry collections,
​​                        Fragments from the Biography of Nemesis (Cherry Grove Press)
​​                        and the chapbook How Marlene Mae Longs for Truth (Dancing Girl Press) appeared in 2013. 
                        
The Only Is won the 2012 Tennessee Chapbook Contest (Poems & Plays),
​​                        and Brief Term, a collection of poems about teachers and teaching was published
​​                        by Black Buzzard Press, 2011. 
​​                        Cosmogony won the 2010 Hazel Lipa Chapbook (Iowa State).
​​                        Lois is widely published in literary journals & online ezines from American Poetry Review 
​                        to Zone 3.  She teaches Creative Writing at The College of New Jersey.
 
                        LoisMarieHarrod.org ​
 

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