Post Swarm
When the doctor passed him the prosthetic eye,
black on brown on bone,
he realized that sand is a speck of glass
and glass covets sunlight.
Like ripe berries or plump Bartlett pears.
He was a boy when his family crossed the desert.
Everyone pushed toward distant silica glimmers
to New Mexico and then California
to pluck raspberries and bell peppers,
and later picking pears in Oregon.
He revisits his earliest memory,
nesting in his grandmother’s apron
after a wasp stung his soft hand
as they examined the gladiolus bells in her garden.
By the time rockets poured into the FOB,
he’d outgrown nostalgia and curiosity,
but held on to a hatred of dull gritty earth.
His life is woven into desert sands,
fragmented memories and blood feeding soil and slate.
At Walter Reed, these shards assemble then burst free,
whole palm open, digits splayed,
like a blossom to welcome home the wasp,
to forgive the ache.
Jody Calls
It was an offense,
these chirping birds mocking us
at formation before the sun had even risen.
They peeped at us from trees surrounding the football field
where we assembled into a ragtag reflective-belt
wearing collective, forming a suffering organ,
most of us still not sober from the night before,
but on time to run and chant and sweat,
huffing the worst fumes of our best years.
We’d just been talking about
Jody Calls. How chants kept us from throwing up
as we shuffled endlessly in long, hazy columns,
how Jody Calls were almost a celebration of booze.
My favorite Jody Call ends with:
Look Out Ground I’m Coming Through
Dennis Mont’Ros served in the Air Force for 20 years before pursuing a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at the University of South Florida. He is a former accredited Veteran Service Officer, and currently teaches in the Judy Genshaft Honors College at University of South Florida. His work has previously been published at The Acentos Review, Visitant, and The Texas Review. Dennis is currently working on his first full-length novel, VSO.
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