View from the Study, 402 North School Street
Veteran with Ghosts
Alonso drank his water from a straw,
mumbled, “The Second World”
and says, “I’m seeing more and more
dead people. We’re closer than people
think.” His mention of dead people,
not fearful, more like a favor to me
to tell me that. “Do you know any of them?”
I ask him. “I can’t talk about it,” he replies. “They
won’t let you sleep. The cabrones
won’t let you sleep.”
Another time he says, “Well, the staff, they wheel you out
to get fresh air, I can’t walk
broke my hip bones, too brittle – “
I look at Alonso looking pale as hell,
I’m thinking yeah, before Aggy died
he was as pale as a ghost, too, his dark
complexion gone, a war veteran and smoker,
he was like a ghost with no sun.
Alonso nods, says, “They come at night, I see them
____________
Zeke Sanchez
Review by Massimo Fantuzzi
War is no longer witnessed only by those on the battlefield; now we all carry its images. Trauma hits each of us differently, but nothing can make us unsee the blood, the dust, the cries. Alonso’s future is our future – his ghosts ours.
Review by Dave Mehler
Alonso, or Al, and Logan feature in this series of poems for this issue, and as usual in Zeke’s poems the Vietnam War figures as a backdrop, whether stated directly or not, it is always the shadow behind, often aging and poverty as well, most often in an agrarian, rural Idaho setting. Alonso complains that shades or ghosts of friends and family are appearing. The question is begged in the poem, are the ghosts the literal dead appearing or symptoms of delusion, PTSD trauma, or senility? I think given the context of this poem and the one that follows after in this issue, the literal read is the right one. The poem simply ends, drops off mid-sentence, spoken by Al, no period or end-quotes, and again I mentally questioned the typo, but then didn’t, because the ghosts will keep coming to visit, visible now that the barrier between the physical and spiritual is thinning, growing porous, and soon Al, increasingly growing pale, will join them.