From “Design at Mahmoudiya”
At the crossroads of assault and proceed,
with the sweat dirty gun grease of law machines,
amid thrill and lull, faithless young gods
inured to guts swill black smoke, uniformed,
flag-fetishistic do-good recruits who
embrace for sanity’s (checkpoint!) sake (checkpoint!)
the creed of pluck for country and pluck for self
and die in the smithy of old gods’ desires...
They planned it. This, the goods your works produce.
Dennis Doherty is Coordinator of the Creative Writing Program and Chair of the Poetry Board at SUNY New Paltz in New York. He regards the sky, studies nature, and swaps stories with friends over beer in their hometown of Rosendale. Doherty’s essays, poems, and stories appear throughout the literary press. He is the author of The Bad Man, a volume of poetry.
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