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Contests : War Poetry Contest : Past Winners : 2009 : Jan-Tosh Gerling
DYNCORP INTERNATIONAL
Buzzed boys burn like oil
drinking matches in the tin oven
of the Earth. Death is masculine—
not a frail Grim Reaper
pop-cultured into oblivion on
rock albums and motorcycle promos.
He claws through steel and wood
with bronze arms and thighs,
binges on thumping pulses
and devours tattooed peach corpora
in the volcano of his mouth,
sometimes slow like an iron smelt
or quick like the flash of a car bomb,
a puff of air and then limbless orange.
Tell me why a morgue's cloth
enshrouds this one's eyes,
like a towel blotting a tongue.
Tell me, like an ant tells the
next where home is,
where to find alms for the queen.
We climb to the lips
of our dirt abode single file,
mindless—so tell me mindless.
Listen carefully,
the hush of an eclipse is upon us.
Trains and cars will slow to a stop.
The stars will light up like old neon signs
flickering open and closed
on the bar window for the last time.
Passengers will peer out their windows
at the sense of a world stopped spinning.
This is transition.
Please donate your car.
Don't be political.
Step out of the vehicle slowly.
We can salvage everything accomplished
in the last hundred years of girders, rivets, and oil
for a new way to spread accomplishment.
We just need you to smile
and appreciate the noon twilight.
This poem was a finalist in the 2009 War Poetry Contest sponsored by Winning Writers. Copyright is reserved to the author.
About Jan-Tosh Gerling
Jan-Tosh Gerling recently graduated from Texas Tech University with a B.A. in English. He studied under the award-winning poet John Poch and inspiring writers like Patrick Whitfill and Jacqueline Kolosov. He currently lives in Lubbock, Texas and is interested in escaping.
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