A defining event in the life of most people my age was the Vietnam War. Whether you fought or marched, it was a crucial time in our lives and in the history of the United States. My friend Richard Eric Johnson has written powerful poems about his time in Vietnam. His work is archived in LaSalle University’s Connelly Library and online in Vietnam War Poetry, an impressive archive established by Paul Hellweg. Here’s one of Eric’s poems from that collection:
The Hurricane’s Eye
Richard Eric Johnson
out of the blue white puffy clouds ever higher the towering lightning filled black night heart shaking storm no way around above or beneath into the eye of I and we courage calling courage needed courage in question through the eye past perimeters of storm we flew into the aftermath war zone the hurricane’s eye a singular moment tranquility remembered
Eric has compiled a stunning manuscript of poems about the war and its aftermath in his life, a manuscript I expect will soon be snapped up by a savvy publisher.
Well, it’s still beating and now that I’m well into my 80s, I have to pay attention to such routine matters. So do the doctors, who gave me a variety of tests last year before I went through a minor surgery. One of the tests is the subject of this poem, which was published in Grey Matter: An Anthology of Contemporary Medical Poems by the University of Arizona College of Medicine in Phoenix.
Nuclear Test
Sally Zakariya
I thought it meant exploding a bomb in some far distant corner of the earth. But for this old body it means injecting a noxious liquid then watching through a whirring, rumbling machine to see how my newly stressed heart behaves. Normal, they say. But what’s normal about stockpiling horror and threatening war? What’s normal about wielding dread and the fear of fallout? In this hospital, this microcosm of the globe, peace reigns—for now.
Thank you, Grey Matter. I’m delighted to be in your first print anthology.