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Marvin Bell
(1937 - ) “Known as An insider who thinks like an
outsider," Marvin Bell was for many years Flannery O'Connor Professor of
Letters at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. He also served as
The interrogation celebrated spikes
and cuffs,
the inky blue that invades a blackened
eye,
the eyeball that bulges like a radish,
that incarnadine only blood can create.
They asked the young taxi driver
questions
he could not answer, and they beat his
legs
until he could no longer kneel on their
command.
They chained him by the wrists to
the ceiling.
They may have admired the human form
then,
stretched out, for the soldiers were also
athletes
trained to shout in unison and be buddies.
By the time his legs had stiffened,
a blood clot
was already tracing a vein into his
heart.
They said he was dead when they cut
him down,
but he was dead the day they arrested
him.
Are they feeding the prisoners
gravel now?
To make them skillful orators as
they confess?
Here stands Demosthenes in the
military court,
unable to form the words “my country.”
What
shall we do, we who are at war but are
asked
to pretend we are not? Do we need another
naive apologist to crown us with clichés
that would turn the grass brown above a
grave?
They called the carcass Mr. Dilawar. They
believed he was innocent. Their orders were
to step on the necks of the prisoners,
to
break their will, to make them say
something
in a sleep-deprived delirium of
fractures,
rising to the occasion, or, like Mr. Dilawar,
leaving his few possessions and his body.
§
Scott M. Miller was born in
The Chickasaw Plum
appreciates the opportunity to publish his two sonnets below:
When the
fire stops, when the soul flees
Into its
verdant shelter, its safe zone,
When all
around have fallen to their knees
In prayer,
the vacant body sleeps alone;
A piece of
boot, a tire: offerings
To Mars,
with love, from his unerring slave...
Who were
nearby still hear the blast - it sings
Of melting dogtags. Heated stones engrave
A new name
for the char-black corpse;
we guess
His sorry
purpose - An Army of One (a cog,
In other
words), but not his wife's (hostess
At Denny's). For the
man, the long, hard slog
Of life is
over... She buries a thumb,
And fills the void with a double-shot of rum.
§
What I have
learned, I never can unlearn;
The
knowledge will remain with me as years,
Thrusting
shadowy lines like flaming spears
Aimed soulward. Ashes settle in the urn
And I
inhale, a noxious opiate:
Love, death
and love again. Variety!
O Chang and
Eng, your disability
Is cured;
the mystery, insatiate,
Is ended. What remains is
alkaline:
A metal
heart, a sacrifice and lye
Along the riverbank. No more
pristine
Imaginings,
no respite from the why;
I live. The tributary, serpentine,
Flows
past, as I make soap to cleanse the sky.
§
Two Poems by John R. Guthrie. “Crusaders,
Crusaders,
"This crusade,
this war on terrorism
is going to take a while."
--George W. Bush
The soldiers of our fairest Lord
sacked Barra
first, then Marra.
Famished from their holy work
they grilled the children whole,
the grown-ups sectioned.
Then they ate them.
Praise be the warriors of the Lord,
of Jesus meek and pure,
they who consumed the Muslim hoards
for Jesus of the sharp broadsword.
§
Sweat Chlorides
Careful
as chickadees with their only child
Millicent ebullient to be Mom at last.
Big Joe:
tool chest, toy tractor, tiny overalls --
Daily offerings on the altar of my boy.
Do the
test if you want, ain’t nothing
but colds!
Sweat
Chlorides; positive, cystic fibrosis.
One
curly-haired toddler,
Millicent
muted, wet-plaster pale,
Big Joe? Adrift on The
The
slowing centrifuge sings as it spins
The wall
clock sweeps enfilade seconds away
To the sound of the glassware’s small distant chimes.
Through
the window behind them gilt leaves descend
To the river that mirrors their fall from the sky.
The
Chickasaw
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