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Contests : War Poetry Contest : Past Winners : 2011 : Bill Duvall
DISPATCHERS
Who will speak to the dead?
They hem us in. They press up
against us in our churches.
We are the dispatchers
sending them in yellow
taxicabs to the front,
nailing them to the aluminum
skin of tandem Airstreams &
still they pull the prows
of those silver palaces all the way
from Poughkeepsie to Tikrit.
No matter where we send them
they are sen-n-t-t they are
bolted by the throat
but we dispatch them but
they take us with them but
we cut our taxes to escape them but
we starve the beast to erase them
but they pull the silver rigs along.
We used their homes for collateral
gave Goldman Sachs their capital,
since they are not of the ruling class that's
only natural, they don't get the message.
Why not just bereave us
then leave us alone jesus fucking christ?
Can't they just stay down & buried down
they corkscrew up from their tombs like
Jesus Christ they are the least of His brethren
we have made them O their wind blast
bellows the morning with a song, now doesn't it?
JOCK STRAPPED
The spring freeze came
but was seasonal.
The bestiary follies
struck a responsive note
in the mosquito colonies
that swarmed over the tobacco
fields. My neighbor's kid
took an IED in the loins
while his dad marched
on the county seat
declaiming for lower taxes.
Stone upon borrowed stone,
slab upon borrowed slab,
the dispatchers abandon their deposits
on the lawn, the spring echoed
hickory mansions of the wind
turning soft rain
into angry snow.
We buried them without giving them
a voice, a nation's occult blood
was found in their stool.
Loved ones huddling
in the cheap seats
pray for opposing rain.
ENCOMIUM
The Valvoline Sweepstakes winner is ushered
in to the Ross Dress For Less sell off.
High pumps are required and the double breasted
Blaupunkt woofer as we preside over the death
of another fallen Capricorn. What sign are you?
The stars are probably with you. You're still here.
Occluded lives form at the needle's point
while the hung guy and the sensate
girl wait on battlefields remote
for the collection bag to fill. Are we done?
No, but they are. Exeunt.
Screws hold the grunt's hot hand in a jar.
But how did it happen? He stayed stoned forever
when he was in Iraq, nor did his valor
lessen after four tours. He knew the Iraqis
didn't want him there but America, ad hominem,
borrowing money ad hoc from the Reds
sent him back ad infinitum until he was dead.
Ambuscades flash down from the hills, which at first
appeared barren but are now rife with greenery
and good fruit. God gave them one way to serve.
The vestments are all laid out, none missing,
the cassock has dried on the glass radiator
God lets us see into, but only from ambush. And Later.
These poems won an Honorable Mention in the 2011 War Poetry Contest sponsored by Winning Writers. Author Bill Duvall received a $100 award. Copyright is reserved to the author.
About Bill Duvall
Bill Duvall is a Baltimore native and retired federal employee living in North Carolina. He has a BS in
Economics and an MFA in Writing (Poetry) from Vermont College of Fine Arts. He is a member of the North
Carolina Poetry Society and the US Dramatists Guild.
His poetry has appeared in many online and print journals, including North Carolina Literary Review,
Contemporary American Voices, Pinesong, and Comrades. He is working on a series of 10-minute
plays in verse about the slavery era in America. His poem "Typist" recently won the Penumbra Poetry
Prize.
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