WHAT OUR FATHERS DIDN’T TELL US ABOUT THE WAR .............................................KELLEY WHITE

What Our Fathers Didn’t Tell Us About the War

Poem by Kelley White

that they were young, but the enemy soldiers were younger that they sometimes loved their buddies more than they loved their wives and girlfriends at home that they made up bawdy words to the most sentimental and sweet of songs that they hallucinated on liquor on marijuana anti-freeze and heroin that they dream of it now and dreamed of a war in their own back yards while they were overseas that they loved their mothers that they feared their fathers that they lost religion that they gained it that they kept a single toe from an enemy soldier for a few months and can’t remember why or where they threw it away that they were hungry and ate food from another man’s backpack that they were thirsty and drank water that was mixed with blood that they slept while their best friends masturbated to their sister’s pictures that they cried that they didn’t cry when their hometown buddy drowned that they saw children die that they killed children that they loved their children that their children grew forgotten that their children ran away

Pediatrician Kelley White has worked in inner city Philadelphia and rural New Hampshire. Her poems have appeared in Exquisite Corpse, Rattle and JAMA. Her recent books are TOXIC ENVIRONMENT (Boston Poet Press) and TWO BIRDS IN FLAME (Beech River Books.) She received a 2008 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant.