Worn and tattered, the Western Union telegram holds her heart within its folds. Shall I make wedding plans for Thursday or Saturday? She will wait for him to send word. Once received, she will secure a witness and the priest, bake a yellow cake with buttercream frosting and buy some…

Beyond smoking scrub, a red flag rises on a rifle. I hear O’Malley curse the almighty as we all deflate: exhausted, hungry, lice-infested, frozen. Stillness shrouds our brooding group. More hours on this mountain means no one eats through zero-dark-hundred. I try to imagine what a hot shower feels like. I…

I am waiting.I am waitingto go from one roomto another room.I used to waitto go from one baseto another base.I went from a basewhere a guy committed suicideto a base where the instructor drowned a recruit during trainingto a base where a Marine put his gun in his mouthand another…

I get hot.I get hit by memories of the hot heat that ate our heads.When I write about the military, I get confusedabout dates,but I rememberthe fire,the way that ghosts come on so quickly,like now.             You said not to push myself to hard,but do you understand I would never fucking writethen,that…

American flag, half mass withthin canary lights penetrating through its creases, waving, while he solemnly walked downthe paved road, with his head half-lowered, veiled by the flag’s shadow.  Green eyes dimmed, like a melancholy flame on a lighter, cast shattered remints of his sanity. Flashing thoughts, like the English Channel’s restless waves pounding against the sands, remembering dense air,…

Whatdoeshesee lookingoutthekitchenwindow smokingacigarette anddrinkingaMillerbeer? Statement from the author: I would get up in the middle of the night and dad would be drinking a Miller beer. Looking out the dark kitchen window. Sometimes I would ask him what he saw in War World ll. But he told me nothing about…

Finally, Paris.Way of Utah Beach,Battle of the Bulge,              Buchenwald. “Now Entering GermanyCourtesy of the Super Sixth” Grandpa as a young tourist.First trip abroad,stops along The River Seine.Garand over shoulder slung. Handsome in his tanker jacket;kept him from freezing in Ardennes. Smiling broadlyunder M1 helmet,because that’s what one did! In those days,that’s what…

In a graveyard for soldiers under a frowning moon, birds eschew the crumbs of dry bones of dead warriors, dogs curve around the boundaries as they sense the odor of death, and mothers and wives, oblivious of these things place flowers on tombstones to celebrate life: A blind silhouette of…

Screams in broken languages of anguish slash into sand and rock leaving a gory scarlet tint to sandy dust soaring high into the air. A cold hopelessness lingers over the blood painted sand as battles continue, on and on. Death circles over the battered arenas of combat as the deafening…

The pale, lonely man exists in a patchwork put together-life, his parts held together with Elmer’s glue, and bailing wire. His soul… dark brown like Bourbon and Coca Cola; he is a conglomeration of misplaced desires, fantasies, and sounds of gaudy birds screeching stridently inside his tortured mind. He shuffles through…