|
|
 |
Contests : War Poetry Contest : Past Winners : 2011 : Danielle Kessinger
PRICE
they circle, lattice of camaraderie pattern-worn
like the lawn chairs cupping them close to earth.
unready to test their strength on children
grown and birthed in the space left by their absence,
fingers curl around cans and bottles
savoring what was out of reach.
hours ago they stood taut while
a hundred flags waved welcome home,
buffeted by the gravity of air.
as light withdraws to the horizon
disgust films their conversation, filling the crevices
with dogs cowering away from masters' fists
mules brutally kicked to hurry their toil
women barely glimpsed behind cloth
lies like dust on the road.
one dangles proof of inhumanity, a farmer
demanding dollars for a dead goat
while the blood of his son, caught
in the same mortar blast as the slain
animal, still waters the tired fields.
they care more about the goats they beat than
their children, he spits upon the driveway.
another, eyes circling the wet stain,
says perhaps the man did not know
what price to name,
then rises and drains the dark glass in three long pulls.
This poem was a finalist in the 2011 War Poetry Contest sponsored by Winning Writers. Copyright is reserved to the author.
About Danielle Kessinger
Danielle Kessinger had just graduated with a bachelor's in Literature and a minor in Nonviolence when her twin brother enlisted in the army. She taught in three countries over the course of his enlistment and two deployments in Afghanistan, the second the result of stop loss. In Japan, when they asked her what he would be doing, she did not have the words to explain travels through mountains with only the walls of the Humvee for protection, so she told them desk job. In Asheville, North Carolina, when she sent care packages, they asked her how she could be so pro-war, so she raged and started writing poetry. In Costa Rica, where they had no military, they asked her what it was like to be a soldier, to worry and wait for them, so she gave them poems. Danielle is currently at work on a novel rooted in those years.
|
|