“But the turmoil they experience isn’t who they are; the PTSD invades their minds and bodies.” ― Robert Koger, Death's Revenge
I wish I could
tell you how
they loved
before the war,
farm girl farm boy,
how they believed
in cows and hogs,
and children to
work the farm,
and a new big house
with flowerbeds
and chickens.
All I can tell you
is how the Germans
came back again,
invisible to all but him,
swooping over
the big new house,
crawling through
stubbled hayfields
in the night,
looking for him.
All I can tell you
is how a vision
distorted children
into soldiers from
a bloody front
come to kill again,
how screams drove back
the cow’s sweet moan,
how fragile broken bones
become war’s
discounted debris.
Joyce Compton Brown has published in journals such as Kakalak, Still, and County Lines. Her chapbooks are Bequest (Finishing Line, 2015) and Singing with Jarred Edges (2018). She spends her time writing, drawing, and singing and playing old-time songs on the five-string. In a previous life she graded thousands of papers, was a semi-activist treehugger, and semester-break scribbler.