Tag: War

“War? Rumors of War?” “By John Guzlowski

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Armentieres_after_Bombing,_May_1940_Art.IWMARTLD175

 

War? Rumors of War?     

 

     There’s been a lot of talk in the news about the possibility of war in Iran and the Middle East.  Some people are talking about why we need to go to war with Iran, and some are talking about why war with Iran is a mistake.  

     I’m tired of war.

     I’ve lived through the Korean war, the Vietnam War, the first Gulf War, the second Gulf War, the war on Terror, the Afghan War, and the Iraq War. And this list doesn’t include all the little bitty wars I’ve lived through, like Panama, Grenada, Lebanon, and it doesn’t include all those other little bitty wars I’ve forgotten about and that only the dead remember.

     War is a terrible thing.  I think that’s one of the things I’ve learned from my mother and father and from writing about their lives and the experience of other Poles in World War II.

     In my poem “Landscape with Dead Horses,” I talk about the way the war began in Poland on September 1, 1939.  Here’s what I say:

War comes down like a hammer, heavy and hard
flattening the earth and killing the soft things:
horses and children, flowers and hope, love
and the smell of the farmers’ earth, the coolness
of the creek, the look of trees as they unfurl
their leaves in late March and early April.

     This is war for me.  This is the way I see war. There’s nothing pretty about war, nothing heroic, nothing epic or Homeric.  50 million civilians died in World War II. And you can bet that not one of those deaths was peaceful, not one was a death you would want to wish on your own mother or your father or your children.

     And what I hate to admit about war – but I have to – is that sometimes war is necessary.

     I’m glad that the US went to war against Hitler and dragged him and his soldiers and followers down and tried to bury every single one of them in an unmarked and unmourned grave.

     War, as I see it, was terrible and it was necessary, but the thing I can’t ever forget is that the Germans who fought for Hitler also thought the war was necessary and justified.

    That’s one of the problems with war.

     What brings us together finally – brings together those who don’t want war and those who want war – is that we all end up scratching our heads and grieving over the chaos and the loss.

 

About the Author: John Guzlowski’s writing appears in Rattle, North American Review, and other journals.  Echoes of Tattered Tongues, his memoir about his parents’ experiences as slave laborers in Nazi Germany, won the Benjamin Franklin Poetry Award and the Eric Hoffer/Montaigne Award.  He is the author of the Hank and Marvin mystery novels and True Confessions, a memoir in poems.

 

More By John Guzlowski:

Language and Loss

From the Ashes: An Interview With John Guzlowski

 

Image Credit: Edward Bawden “Armentieres after Bombing, May 1940″ Public Domain

 

Lynn Houston: “You Leave and I Can’t Sleep”

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You Leave and I Can’t Sleep

By Lynn Houston

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In August 2016, while at a writing residency, I met a man who was already supposed to have deployed with his National Guard unit. We were given the gift of three weeks before he left, time we used to get to know each other, as we helped out on a friend’s farm, had long conversations on a porch swing, and rode his motorcycle up into the mountains. The night before he left the country, as he was driving to the base, we talked on the phone for over three hours. For six months while he was gone, I sent him near-daily poems in the mail. When he returned, after an initial successful reunion, it became clear that he was plagued with anger issues and other problems associated with a difficult re-entry into his civilian life. He began seeing someone else, and we broke up. In my grief, I revised the poems I’d sent him and began submitting them to poetry contests. Unguarded won the inaugural chapbook contest of the Heartland Review Press and is due to be released in December 2017, with a series of readings and book signings in the Elizabethtown, KY, area scheduled for early 2018.

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You Leave and I Can’t Sleep

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If I’m writing this, it means I can’t sleep and that
the rain outside my window drops blindly in the dark.

The crops need it, the cashier told me earlier, ringing
me up for a pint of milk, making small talk, making change.

And now the tipped carton has marred the pages
on my too-small desk. I’m trying not to make too much of it—

this mess, the disasters my life and pages gather.
I’m trying to be kinder to myself, more forgiving.

Outside, a leopard moth lands on the screen, shudders
to dry its wings. One touch from my finger would strip

the powdered coating that allows it to fly in rain.
I wish it might have been so easy to keep you

from boarding the plane that took you to war.
In the predawn, my neighbors still asleep, I am the only one

to hear the garbage truck grind to a stop,
its brakes the sound of an animal braying.

The rain has stopped, too. I look over the smudged papers
on my desk. Nothing important has been lost.

When you come home safely to me in six months,
we will be able to say, nothing important has been lost.

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Editor’s Note: This poem is the second of a series. The first poem, “On the Farm, Before You Leave for Afghanistan,” was published two weeks ago.

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About the Author: Lynn Marie Houston holds a PhD from Arizona State University and an MFA from Southern Connecticut State University. Her poetry appears in numerous literary journals–such as O-Dark-Thirty, Gravel, Painted Bride Quarterly, Ocean State Review, Heavy Feather Review–and in her three collections: The Clever Dream of Man (Aldrich Press), Chatterbox (Word Poetry Books), and Unguarded (Heartland Review Press). For more information, visit lynnmhouston.com

Image Credit: John Coates Browne “View from parlor window, Presqu’ile” (The Getty’s Open Content Program)

 

“On the Farm, Before You Leave for Afghanistan” By Lynn Houston

Posted on by asitoughttobemagazine

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In August 2016, while at a writing residency, I met a man who was already supposed to have deployed with his National Guard unit. We were given the gift of three weeks before he left, time we used to get to know each other, as we helped out on a friend’s farm, had long conversations on a porch swing, and rode his motorcycle up into the mountains. The night before he left the country, as he was driving to the base, we talked on the phone for over three hours. For six months while he was gone, I sent him near-daily poems in the mail. When he returned, after an initial successful reunion, it became clear that he was plagued with anger issues and other problems associated with a difficult re-entry into his civilian life. He began seeing someone else, and we broke up. In my grief, I revised the poems I’d sent him and began submitting them to poetry contests. Unguarded won the inaugural chapbook contest of the Heartland Review Press and is due to be released in December 2017, with a series of readings and book signings in the Elizabethtown, KY, area scheduled for early 2018.

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On the Farm, Before You Leave for Afghanistan

Henry was the first to know I was your woman.
Henry, the goat. The one who hates you.

Since then I’ve been surprised by how often
clouds take the shape of curled horns
and remind me of that Tennessee morning

we left a shared bed to feed the herd
and took the smell of love-making with us.

Like any hard-headed man, when Henry knew
I was yours, he wanted me for a goat wife,
butted my thigh and bit my boot top,

rubbed his face against its orange leather.
Aware of Henry’s macho display and the force

of his horns, you turned your back on me
and walked toward the house, knowing that
to keep me safe you had to leave.

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About the Author:Lynn Marie Houston holds a PhD from Arizona State University and an MFA from Southern Connecticut State University. Her poetry appears in numerous literary journals–such as O-Dark-Thirty, Gravel, Painted Bride Quarterly, Ocean State Review, Heavy Feather Review–and in her three collections: The Clever Dream of Man (Aldrich Press), Chatterbox (Word Poetry Books), and Unguarded (Heartland Review Press). For more information, visit lynnmhouston.com

 

Image Credit: Jack Delano: “Rural Scene, Near Andover, Maine” courtesy of the Getty’s Open Content Program.