Cod Wars

Simon McKeown

Ocean-going vessels laid to waste in graveyards of broken wavelengths,
Heavy crushers twist and turn in gatherings of once great fishers and ships.

Oh proud the man on tortured signing-on day!
Like cod, must not become the dodo of the deep –
Millions lost to creditors, but not the Common Man?

Rust never sleeps,
Bites into steel once watertight as the community’s income,
Now disappearing fast.

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At the Feet of Shelley

Simon McKeown

At the feet of Shelley,
Under Roman skies and aching shadows of pines,
Looking for Gramsci, I found you, Gregory,
Whom I crossed the city for.
Not gasoline but airless Metro in and out.
No ghosts haunt me today –
In good company.

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Going Home

Michael Brownstein

On the morning of day one thousand,
someone woke him: Son, you're going home,
the sweat of blood still thick in his mouth, the weight
of his friend still heavy across his shoulder.
When he'd handed him to the medics,
he could no longer smell and now everything
he ate was blood – collard greens for dinner,
garlic mashed potatoes at lunch, salty grits,
even cold beer – but he went on as if
the uninjured had few needs, as if pain were
imagined, food as he remembered.

When the helicopters land in the heat,
he will not be allowed a place with the living
though he is alive, but with the dead
and dying, the legs and forearms, the scarred
and scared, the recovering and the screamer –
he who is whole, unblemished, hair
still growing, memory intact, a photograph
of the girl left behind safe in an envelope
in his left pocket. So this is it one day to another,
one cloudscape, one sandstorm, one pot-broiled road,
the city smoke and migraines, dust and saliva,
the taste of blood so salty it will not let go.