Poetry from Veterans and Families Of Veterans

Featured: Dan Wilcox - Albany VFP, Gerald McCarthy - Tappan Zee (Hudson Valley) VFP

The Latest Words On 'Post Traumatic Press'

and Dayl Wise's Soldier-Poets

New York Times Article on the Puffin Forum Reading in Teaneck, NY

Dan Wilcox Reports on the Woodstock, NY Town Hall Reading

 

 Dan Wilcox is a poet and photographer who is said to have the largest collection of unknown poets on the planet. Dan hosts the “Third Thursday Open Mic” at Lark Street Bookshop in Albany, New York and reads poetry on a regular basis at various clubs throughout the Hudson River Valley. He is a member of a poetry troupe, known as 3 Guys From Albany.” He is the author of Meditations of a Survivor (A.P.D. The Alternative Press for Albany’s Poets) and has published eight books including two more of his own and a book for Anthony Bernini, which will be carried by Amazon.com.
Dan is an active member of Veterans for Peace, chapter 10 in Albany, New York.

Baghdad/Albany
By Dan Wilcox


The TV glows green like the obsolete computer in the attic
blurred shapes that could be buildings or simply the geometry of electrons
bright circles of lens flare as accents
an abstract electronic image they say is Baghdad.
I don’t know Baghdad, don’t know where the missiles are falling
I don’t know which buildings are burning, which roads are blocked
I don’t know Baghdad, but I do know Albany.

They say the missiles are launched from ships 200 miles away
they say they land with “amazing accuracy”.
There could be ships in New York harbor
firing Cruise missiles at the Empire State Plaza, at the Governor’s Mansion on Eagle St.
200 Cruise missiles raining down on Albany tonight with amazing accuracy.

taking out Lark St., the Bookstore, the Flower Shop,
Elissa Halloran’s gone up in smoke
Ben & Jerry’s a sea of mush
Bombers’ Burritos blasted to bits by its namesakes.

With amazing accuracy one missile misses by only 1% takes out my house, rattles the windows of St. Peter’s Hospital.
Wounded shopkeepers and teachers, their children bleeding
show up at Albany Medical Center; the halls are jammed
with improvised beds; a team of doctors and nurses
die in an explosion in the parking lot.

The sound of planes overhead, the trucks on New
Scotland Ave.
are the invading army, blasting into Albany.
A young mother driving home from work is shot
by nervous tankers as she drives across the Normanskill Bridge.
On Willett St. the 1st Presbyterian Church is in ruins
downtown St. Mary’s Church burns, City Hall collapses.

Galleries burn, paintings and photographs melt with the wallpaper
no poetry can be heard on Lark St., or Hudson Ave., or North Pearl.

And in Watervliet the homes of laborers and postal workers, of waitresses
and truck drivers are flattened when the Arsenal is hit
(the enemy says it was a cynical and evil move to place a military facility there).

The electricity stops, the water fails, the Price Choppers and
Hannafords are looted, Mobil & Hess stations are on fire
Dunkin’ Donuts a pile of plastic and bricks
next to the broken bottles of what was once Justin’s.

And School 19, where citizens sought refuge from their burned houses
is mistaken for a command center and hit by a bunker buster.

I watch TV, watch a city destroyed by an invading army
it could be Baghdad, or Basra
it could be Saigon, or Leningrad

I don’t know Baghdad
but I do know Albany.
And it’s burning.

 

Gerald McCarthy is the author of War Story (The Crossing Press) and Shoetown (Cloverdale Library). A recipient of awards from the National Writers Union and the NY Council on the Arts, his poetry and fiction have been published in New Letters, TriQuarterly, Beloit Poetry Journal, Ohio Review, Rattle, Ploughshares, Nimrod, and other magazines and anthologies. He has also been a visiting artist at The American Academy in Rome and directs a writing workshop in Tuscany, Italy each summer with Colette Inez and Lynn Lauber. He is active in Vets for Peace, chapter 60 and Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Currently he is a professor of English at St. Thomas Aquinas College, and lives with his wife Michele and their three sons in Nyack, New York.

 

On a line by Li Po
By Gerald McCarthy


Second snow of November,
already the high peaks are white
in the blue distance.

Now when I think of my first
homecoming,
I see myself bent double
carrying duffels down from a train--
city lights,
the war far away.

Tonight, all this comes back again,
as my sons stand beside me
watching the fire,
the snow full in our faces.

Peace falls away,
clear cold water in a brook.
The great horned owl’s cry
pierces the dark, and I think
of what ruins our lives.