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November 12, 2010

Belated, In Honor of Veterans Day

Home today with sick kids and trying to get caught up on a few things.  Let me just tailgate on David Abrams's moving post on his blog The Quivering Pen about Veterans Day: If you do nothing else to honor Veterans Day, go buy a book by a veteran. Possibly Here, Bullet or Phantom Noise by Brian Turner.  Or The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien.  Or Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes.

Here's Brian Turner's poem "Here, Bullet."

Here, Bullet

If a body is what you want,
then here is bone and gristle and flesh.
Here is the clavicle-snapped wish,
the aorta's opened valves, the leap
thought makes at the synaptic gap.
Here is the adrenaline rush you crave,
that inexorable flight, that insane puncture
into heat and blood. And I dare you to finish
what you've started. Because here, Bullet,
here is where I complete the word you bring
hissing through the air, here is where I moan
the barrel's cold esophagus, triggering
my tongue's explosives for the rifling I have
inside of me, each twist of the round
spun deeper, because here, Bullet,
here is where the world ends, every time.

Questions of the Day: What books by soldiers would you recommend?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried. Probably the best short story written about Vietnam.

Tamara said...

I agree. Maybe one of the best stories ever written period!