American Ash

The Veteran
Beside the barn a huge stack
of logs cut and split with imperfect
symmetry and Howard his
bald head like a bullet is
in his undershirt

Marine tattoos
on his bulging biceps and I
remember things he’s told me
about the Nam and the drugs
and living on the street and finally

Meeting Suzanne who loved him
whole again. They moved here
to raise horses which healed him
until Suzanne passed from cancer
and he wept in my arms like a baby
and started drinking again
Invasive Species

Howard says Back up your truck
we’ll load er up
Ash? I ask
having seen the stumps
beside the road
Yeah he says
You know it’s against the law
to haul firewood cross
county lines don’t you but
it don’t matter no more
with ash wood
They’re all dead now anyways


Emerald ash borers
Howard says
they come from Asia about
thirty years ago and now
they pretty much killed every ash
in the east a shame he says

I offer to pay him for the firewood
but he ignores me and we load
half a ton in the back of my truck
and stand there a minute or two
resting and I think

They must have looked
like old men, the ash trees
dry and gray and brittle
death spreading from one tree
to another down the road
Abandoned Tractor

Howard is looking at his forty
acre spread where he grew
corn and soy and horses
It’s mostly scrub now

He kept the mule
that reminds him of him
And a few of the horses
too old to sell

He hasn’t the heart
to kill them

The soil he and Suzanne worked
is fallow, choked
with weeds and the smell
of failure Gasoline
Old warriors rarely
say anything about
people they killed or
horrors they saw instead
they talk about the fun stuff
of war the killer weed and
the mama-san they spent
a weekend with

Or maybe
the strange feeling of stepping
off the plane in Dulles
having misplaced their lives
and now living someone else’s

Once when he was drinking
Howard told me how he watched
seventeen Vietnamese children
mistakenly machine gunned

By our own choppers and Howard
and his buddies were ordered
to pile the bodies
pour gasoline over them
and light them on fire

And I thought Holy Jesus
these men we send to do
unspeakable crimes
in our name

Bury that shit real deep
where no one can ever find it


Michael Simms is an American poet and literary publisher. His poems have been published in literary journals and magazines including 5 A.M., Poetry Magazine, Black Warrior Review, Mid-American Review, Pittsburgh Quarterly, Southwest Review, and West Branch. He is the founder and editor of Vox Populi, and his most recent book, American Ash, is availalbe from Ragged Sky Press.

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