meaningful
We are a small independent press founded in 2000. Our original mission: to give voices to veterans and noncombatants whose lives have been affected by the trauma of war. Since 2003 we have also published other authors whose work we admire.
We publish handsomely-produced chapbooks and the occasional perfect bound trade paperback. We are pleased to publish writing that expresses something poignant and meaningful about the human condition.
Cheryl A. Rice
I have lost the patience with which I could discern shadow from light,
the quiet solitude it takes to document each leaf, each freckle.
I still have the eye, can frame with my thumbs a striking composition,
branch at odds with a fan of needles, purring green pelt at my grey sneakers.
But where to begin? Shadows shift with the sun, temperature drops,
my fingers ache with repetition of sketch, erase, again.
From the time I could hold a pencil I could make it do my bidding,
until the words came, invisible flood of names
for the animals that leapt, still leap in my spring brain.
The sun is too fast for all I have to sing, a picture's not worth near
what I want you to know, what I need to speak in black and white.
A snapshot is close; these sharp figures get closer, as close as I can
with all this dark to do before nightfall.
Guy Reed
I took the devil out of my poem,
he was clogging my voice box with decaying spiders.
I took the devil out of my poem,
but I left in the neck kissing and ear nibbling because it’s angelic.
I took the devil out of my poem
because pus filled my eyes.
Though they make nothing happen, I wanted talk of poems.
Every poem is a love poem. I was tired of talk about nothing.
I took the devil out of my poem
because we see death every day and can do nothing
except waltz; life-two-three, death-two-three.
I took the devil out of my poem
because those who die unjustly return with murder on their minds.
I took the devil out of my poem
because Vincent Van Gogh died on a Tuesday.
I took the devil out of my poem
because he despises innocence,
because he loves love, but he only loves with intent.
I took the devil out of my poem
because I hate the sound of grinding words against my teeth,
he turns them to dust along with my books, my fingers, my pens
and bricks of my convictions.
I took the devil out of my poem
because the God-fearing keep putting him back in there,
there is no caesura the devil cannot fill
with vanity and pride.
I took the devil out of my poem
because the suicides are enough to break the heart.
The red fox shivers as she slips across the lawn.
No-one’s there to see her, or so she hopes.
No-one’s there to see her but the lumbering porcupine
who pauses to note the quick light steps,
then dawdles on, unimpressed
by any flash of grace or show of skill
that serves no need now. He’ll save his finesse
for dealing with fear and for finding a meal
and for his prickly lover who’s prowling the thickets
of deep silence at the roots of his eyes
but who’ll never discover his cache of secrets
no matter how long or how hard she tries.
And now he reaches the red-berried thorn bush
where the wild woods meet the mown lawn.
He dips and snuffles his nose to acknowledge
the mute brotherhood of the spine.
The porcupine lives on Bee Tree Hill;
he’s heading there now and thrusts into the woods.
The dull but still green leaves of the mountain laurel
will close behind him as the daylight fades
and the cold burns the eyes of the red fox.
She’s grinning now as well as shivering
because her teeth are a clamp for a grey mouse.
She’s bringing it home to her children.
Sunlight reflecting off a stainless steel coffee maker
forms a howitzer round
on the refreshment table at the university job fair,
where I try to convince myself
a nine-to-five is the purpose of my life.
The zip-tie holding up the muffler on my neighbor’s
Suburban
reminds me of blaze orange detainees,
their wrists bound, heads sandbagged
and slouched in shameful prayer.
A Lysol-clean classroom tastes like the Dental Corps tent
where I “manned up” for a root canal
because they don’t give Novocain in the combat zone,
not to soldiers, not to kids.
Can you hear the chalice drums,
louder than cannon fire,
the beat of five hundred thousand dead hearts?
I confess,
I enlisted for an honorable crime
to erase a felony from my record.
I pointed my rifle like a rich man’s cane
to direct Iraqi teens mixing concrete,
slaves constructing a perimeter
to block mortars shot from the dusty fields
of their fathers.
Teeth fell from the mouths of those curious boys
who got in the way, who reached out
to touch Kevlar skin, coarse hands—
and the same thing now happens to me
when I open my mouth to speak,
standing naked and bone thin
before an audience of ghosts
in the worst dream of all.
This is who I am,
who we’ve become.
Jessica Lynch
is not my name.
David Petraeus spits in my face
when he writes “How We Won in Iraq.”
Did George W. Bush
really happen?
My story is my own,
and it ends in loss.
Like a gunshot in a basement,
the remains of a thousand explosions shout
(buzz through my skull)
Iraq
drowning out
the moral of these words.
And what remains is a burning whisper:
to enjoy myself
is to forget our routines
are held together
by fragile agreements
tested and broken in war.
Published in Warrior Writers: A Collection of Writing and Artwork
by Veterans (Warrior Writers, 2014)
Kevin Basl
On November 16th, eleven of the 28 contributors met, along with family and friends, to launch Post Traumatic Press’s newest publication, Sound Off: Warrior Writers NJ, a powerful collection of poetry by veterans of World War II, the Vietnam War, the Cold War, and the wars in Iraq, Somalia and Afghanistan.
On May 19, eight authors from PTP read at the Poetry Barn's series "Third Fridays at the Woodstock Library."
Leslie Gerber
Sample Poem
What We Want
What I want
is for her to rise and walk,
to say my name,
to say her name.
What she wants
is another spoonful of fruit.
What I want
is to sit by the fire
on a cold Cape Cod night
wind yelling outside
and talk about the movie we just saw,
how the kids are doing,
what’s in today’s paper.
What she wants
is to get her face away from my kiss,
although she might like the next one.
I want
to take her away from this place
where smiling women in purple shirts
are patiently teaching her
to walk again.
She wants them
to leave her alone.
I do not know
what I want anymore.
So much is gone
that I don’t know what
to miss first
She misses things too
but not knowing what they are
seems to make it easier.
12/24/14