Fruits of War 

                        Platters of ginger chicken
                        bowls of steaming pho,
                        summer rolls with shrimp,
                        small dishes of nuoc mam
                        and thick dark coffee with sweet
                        condensed milk over ice.

                        A feast from the land of My Lai
                        and Ho Chi Minh, the fall
                        of Saigon and broken lives
                        of a protracted, hollow war.

                        How long will it be and how many legs
                        and lives will be lost
                        in another such venture until our cities
                        are dotted with other fine restaurants
                        serving kadu chalow, aushak,
                        fesenjam and sweet ferni? 


                        by Contributing Poet  Margaret Mullins   Copyright © 2010 
                        VWP 2014     First published in  Borderlands:  Texas Poetry Review #35  Fall 2010 

                        Bio:  Margaret Mullins  lives in downtown Baltimore.
                        She is a Pushcart Prize nominee, the editor of Manorborn 2009: The Water Issue 
                        (Abecedarian Press) and author of Family Constellation (Finishing Line Press, 2012.)
​                        Her poetry has appeared on Writer’s Almanac and been read by Garrison Keillor on NPR. ​