Domain of the Golden Dragon, January 1952 by Janet M. Greenstreet

Munitions jeeps abandoned,
each mortar shell is carried 
to the front on our backs,
brass logs peering like mourners
over shoulders in solitary confinement.

Dirt chokes oxygen from a listless sky, 
the surrounding hills laugh at such fools. 
I advance gray and numb
an odd levitation—
no sensation in my body.

Remembering my younger self
rowing across the Delaware
in a dilapidated whiskey barrel;
a fresh-water escape.
I could have let the river take me.

Our platoon reaches
Haktong-Ni battleground
to find it drenched in grief.
An injured soldier comforts another. 
The dead are frozen where they lay.

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Janet M. Greenstreet is a writer and photographer living and working in the Philadelphia area. Her work has been published in Frogpond journal, bottle rockets press, Red Flag Poetry, Philly Beer Scene magazine, and on billboards in the Pennsylvania countryside.