Some of my best friends are dead,
taken down by snipers,
shot when out on patrol,
ripped asunder by IEDs, or
mortared when they thought
they were safe back at the FOB’s womb.
Some of my best friends are dead,
all messed up after returning home,
overdosing on heroin in their pickups,
wiping out on their motorcycles,
driving too fast, burning out too young,
pulling a trigger in a quiet room.
Some of my best friends are dead,
some got the fallen soldier battle cross,
poignant roll calls that reverberated
with a deathly still silence. Others were splayed
like a lepidopterist’s pinned butterfly in an open
casket in a funeral parlor by a soulless strip mall.
Joseph S. Pete is an award-winning journalist, an Iraq War veteran, an Indiana University graduate, a book reviewer for a national magazine, a photographer, and a frequent guest on Lakeshore Public Radio. He is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee who has read his work for the Fictitious series on the iO Theater stage, had plays staged at the Detroit Heritage Theatre Festival and the Veterans 10-Minute Theatre Festival just outside Boston, showcased his photography at the Oddtropolis Art Show in San Francisco and was named the poet laureate of Chicago BaconFest, a feat that Geoffrey Chaucer chump never accomplished. His literary or photographic work has appeared in more than 100 journals, including The Tipton Poetry Journal, Chicago Literati, Dogzplot, Proximity Magazine, Stoneboat, The High Window, Synesthesia Literary Journal, Steep Street Journal, Beautiful Losers, New Pop Lit, The Grief Diaries, Gravel, The Offbeat, Oddball Magazine, The Perch Magazine, Bull Men’s Fiction, Rising Phoenix Review, Thoughtful Dog, shufPoetry, The Roaring Muse, Prairie Winds, Blue Collar Review, The Rat’s Ass Review, Euphemism, Jenny Magazine, Vending Machine Press and elsewhere. Like Bartleby, he would prefer not to