He’d have got meif I hadn’t got him first but I took a lifeI will always be alone I will take him with meto my graveGod rest his soul ____________________________________________________________ Matthew M.C. Smith is a Welsh poet from Swansea. He is published by Icefloe Press, Wellington Street Review, Seventh Quarry,…

In 1967, the Royal Marines were sent to South Yemen to support the evacuation of the British from the port of Aden, a colony. My father was in Four Five Commando unit.                      I Aden, South Yemen, ‘67,Empire’s light on eastern straits.Blades beating, rotor thunderWestlands thump, ascend, gyre;break, split from assault…

Dartmoor speedmarch ’6630 miles, do or die,de-humans, rake-thin,carry loads on backs.Thick boots, breath-beaten,noses, jaws, like bladesof cattle boneslittered on route. Men of arms,of Four Five Commando,see beyond the upland hill-rim;a promise of rainto a green beretbeyond spit, pain. Checkpoints of stones,jokes are thin,frame-ache, sting of sweat,body-rack past forest trackswhere whippet-lads leadand…

Hearing no evil, fearing no manprospective friends alreadycomfortable in their own sins and pancho linerssleep the sleep of regular hoursundisturbed by passing showersundetected scouts or unresolved doubtslet alone the zoned-out still up-and-about newbie too many days in transit, temporarily moodyantsy, goosy, small-town rube with much to prove, Repo Ray broods heblew his…

I bring our children with chestnut hair.We mixed ourselves making them, saw we faredwell in an untested marriage.  For a decade, thin cottonwrapped the bed.  At night, all poverty forgotten. But we separated again—he went to war, mortars of nailsand oven air.  At home, I handled homework and ailments.I knew…

She crochets upstairsfrom his lonely chair,tuning out the rockets of July-smoke sky. For bills not flags, yetshe chained her youthto the steel of his military-morgue toe-tag. Under lashes like willows, still she weeps,feeling how his fingerslast brushed along hers.  Her dreams pull skeins,and months of stitchingare years she blankets in…

She’s mentally moving him in, refreshing the drawer of cotton undershirts, stackinghis tees in rectangles, ironing polo collars. His irises will glow again as sapphire and jade waves of shirts layering the marriage quilt. She’s moving over, moving over to her own side of the bed. They’ll fuse their     divided ship, co-captain it. Yet…

You saw someone without a face waiting in whitesitting on your hospital cot against the dried-up paneled wall of our living room. we were watching Antiques Roadshow He arrived a few days before silently walking around the house room to roomrustling corner cobwebs. Our conversation lingered over who he might be what he may wantwhy only…

From a pallet on the ground I write home that my shrapnel wound is healing.I joke about being named to the hospital’s board of directors. This is not like any medical facility I have ever seen: dirt floor operating room, a single light bulb swinging overhead, air sprayed with blood…

Munitions jeeps abandoned, each mortar shell is carried to the front on our backs,brass logs peering like mournersover shoulders in solitary confinement. Dirt chokes oxygen from a listless sky, the surrounding hills laugh at such fools. I advance gray and numban odd levitation—no sensation in my body. Remembering my younger self rowing across…