Listening to the Army Officer’s Story
How did it feel when your innocence dried up and blew away on the desert wind?
When you woke from unknowing, blissful sleep
to blistering heat,
acrid smoke and shattering cries?
I bet you wished you could go back to sleep.
The sleep you fell into from a lullaby of lies.
Righteous rhetoric repeated
over and over, soothing rhythms
as you were rocked by a firm hand.
In Iraq, when you took your command
you were unprepared, your men untrained.
Can you bear to think it was in vain?
Mission unclear, you had no guide, no plan.
Now your anger boils when you see the pain
of your brothers, broken in pieces, abandoned, ignored.
And when you tell your tale, your audience is bored.
They don’t, won’t, or can’t understand
The helpless fear, frustration, confusion,
the shots you ordered, the blood trail in the sand.
No more can you believe; you’ve been cheated, betrayed
by those you trusted, followed; those who said
We know what’s best, our decisions are made.
Now you cannot go back to your childish trust.
Your first steps taken in a foreign land, now a man,
you face the dawn, because you must.
--Anne Rettenberg
Closer to the Truth
I was the one set to naming things but
he was the one who gave me my names; 'bitch', 'witch', 'crazy whore'
and best, 'snake in the dark and 'serpent girl'.
I never took the names on. Not even when his hand,
heavy on the back of my head
pushed my face to rod and staff while he panted, "suck it bitch."
A Snake knows a snake when she sees one.
Took me some time it did to unravel myself, to find the magic words,
which meant my liberation. Oh my Gods! Freedom.
F-r-e-e-d-o-m.
I squandered freedom, they said.
I built a little casa on the shore of the sea. I painted huge canvasses of thought
and I wrote volumes of feeling. The angels came, wearing pristine white suits,
dangling strait jackets from pale hands,
telling me, 'Time to come home, Lilith'. I smiled sincerely
and told them, "Suck my dick" and I went back to writing.
Luci(fer) popped round the Casa for a cold drink and some hot sex and
yes, yes, yes ... I fucked him (and a few other demons too). My bad.
We gossiped, lying in my bed sharing a smoke, still simmering in our sex.
He told me God had been meddling again, a little Metaphysic surgery.
Seems He put my ex to sleep on a bed of rotting poppies
and fashioned a woman from his rib. This Barbie girl, they called her Eve.
Luci laughed and I don't blame him. It had the feel of a great joke.
Then the tug came, pulling on my dread curiosity.
I had to go back to that prison of a garden.
I had to peer through the hedges to see this woman, Eve.
I hear tell I was jealous. HA! I felt sorry for her. l saw her lying beneath that
Neanderthal Adam, fucking in the missionary position
night after night after night.
Under the moon, her eyes blank, she was softly sighing,
'you're so good, you're so good'. Her voice was sweet, so sweetly ... bored.
Adam never noted it. Why would he?
I bided my time, watching. Even when Luci came and said,
"Babe, let's blow this place", dropping kisses along my neck,
lacing his fingers tight and full of promises in mine, I couldn't be drawn away.
I felt responsible for her.
They say it was Luci who tempted Eve [Stupid asses]. It was me,
who slid into snakeskin, shimmering, opalescent under the sunlight
(no one expects naughtiness before noon). I sang my Siren's song,
sssslowly from the branches of the No No Tree.
She came, my Barbie sister. She came.
'Eve, darling girl', I said; gentle, I didn't want to scare her.
She looked up, wide blue eyes vacant, quite frankly too stupid to be afraid.
"You want to lie underneath that man night on night, always and forever?" She didn't even talk,
she just looked dumb.
Man! I shimmied my hips, tight in snakeskin. I shook my head back and forth.
I sang, charming her, hypnotizing her and I say still, I did it for her own good!
When she was mesmerized (it wasn't too hard to do) I said,
'pick an apple girl, any apple'. She reached her hand up and up she reached. She reached for a nondescript,
nothing special, red apple.
"Bite it", I said. And she did.
I saw dawn rise in her eyes, dark and sensuous. I think it'd have been Art ...
Then that buffoon Adam came into the grove bruising plant, obliterating peace. Eve smiled and tossed him the apple.
"Bite it'! she said ....
"Noooooooooo" I cried.
Too late, too late. Enlightenment strikes as it will.
I was disgusted by their sudden modesty, their preoccupation with ... small concerns. I spit twice, forked tongue flickering. I, Lilith, was gone into obscurity.
Adam and Eve? Well, they live on.
Poor fucks.
--Fiona McColl
Pitchforks, Everyone...Pitchforks
Granny is here to deliver her heathen grandson a bible she insists has the answers
to everything. She stands over me watching, with mouth open, waiting –
perhaps to see if I combust upon receipt; But I do not,
and I suppose that alone is proof enough for her that I am not too far-gone for her to save.
I open the bible because she is still waiting;
I glide through the pages with my thumb.
The edges pull at the particles of my skin like grasshopper feet –
no, like locusts – and it feels good till I see that I’ve been smitten by the lord and I suck my finger for relief.
I look to find a drop of my blood has landed appropriately at Leviticus 20:13 and
this tells me that the devil appreciates irony and that-
| it is the same one who committed gays to death and women to servitude in this book who swung niggers from trees in Virginia and blows up buses in Jerusalem. The earth is just a crumb remaining from the last destruction. |
--Cavol Forbes
If You Died Tonight
If you died tonight
I’d dig a hole in my backyard
to put you in. I’d wrap your naked body in that sheet
stained with your blood
from the time you split open your arms
when we took too many drugs:
but I wouldn’t mark the grave,
that way nobody would know you were lying there—
rotting—
flowers or a tree or some sort of something
using your corpse as a fertilizer;
and it’d be just like the way it was when we were together.
If you died tonight,
I’d draw your portrait
on the sidewalk with the multi-colored chalk
my mother got me for my 9th birthday
and I only used once
but always kept in every garage or basement I’ve ever lived in,
and people would walk over your face,
smudging and erasing your eyes
and your smile, and the only ones that would stop to look
at you would be those that were already
staring down at their feet.
If you died tonight,
I’d go to bed early and wake up late the next morning—
I wouldn’t miss you, but I’d trick myself
into thinking I did, so I’d cry
over my Cinnamon Toast Crunch
and be reminded that no matter how hard I try,
I’ll never again be a child.
If you died tonight,
I’d make you a shrine
with all of the things I should’ve given you
and all the other things
we should’ve held dear.
If you died tonight,
I’d finally quit smoking,
but I’d keep all my ashtrays.
That’s if you die tonight,
but I imagine you’ll live to see morning.
That Last Unconscious Choice
Having read a new book about choices,
Laura suddenly now understood.
We make our own news by the way that we choose;
And she hated the whole bill of goods.
Her decision to hate was a choice, though,
As was reading the darn book to start with;
Same with friends, and her job, and her boyfriend Bob,
And each habit she can’t seem to part with.
Poor Laura’s asleep now, exhausted,
For her world’s upside down in this frame.
She dreams of a savior for all her behavior;
She will miss having someone to blame.
About the poets in this issue
Anne Rettenberg is Editor of Eat a Peach Poetry Journal. She lives in New York City.
Fiona McColl is a poet in Brisbane, Australia.
Cavol Forbes lives in Jamaica, New York.
Cody Hayman lives in Las Vegas, Nevada, where he works with autistic children and attends high school.
Susan C. Peach (her real name) is a therapist, homeschooling mom,
and lover of letters.