Contests : War Poetry Contest : Past Winners : 2006 : Larry Wells
AFTER OUR OWN HEARTS
In a war after our own hearts
the warrior decides where rage
will be stored, where action's jampacked
and flags are spanking, where bullets
will lodge, however far they've traveled
in their weird trajectories.
The Hottentots are on the web
at new horizons. The wiry girls
are on the horn at comfort stations.
Remember the God of Operations! Don't cry
for the ones who never get off, or the ones
who choke on sandwiches.
Their habits are sown with mines.
We have to break these arrangements.
We have to parse the disasters. The war
doesn't end, the critique is ongoing,
though we stamp our defiance
on mountainsides, though we stand
on the throat of the waves.
EAST WIND, RAIN
There. In the clear.
The break in the awful weather.
The eye lowers its bright ladder.
I cannot oppose, or grasp, or ever core the problem.
Deft hands never slipped a wonderknot.
Swift heels never founded a school.
I can see from where I’m sitting.
The breath sounds echo and hold.
*
The trees that stand for their chosen lives would stand
as sovereigns with waists ungirded,
awaiting the fires that finish them.
The hogs will forgive our slaughterhouse manners,
whose strength is tapped to be our strength,
their acumen edged with a stone.
*
All the creatures have seconds.
There isn't a second to spare.
A gracious hospitable
Nothingness
waits upon this last prehensile thought.
*
The clouds come scouring,
drilling for land.
These poems were finalists in the 2006 War Poetry Contest sponsored by Winning Writers. Copyright is reserved to the author.
About Larry Wells
Larry Wells was born in Iowa, was raised in Virginia, and is a longtime resident of Memphis, Tennessee. He was an art major once. Currently, he is employed as a Physical Therapist at the VA Medical Center in Memphis. The appearance online of an earlier version of the poem "Life's Picture History" (as a finalist in the 2004 Winning Writers War Poetry Contest) constitutes his publication history to date. He has his expectations.
