Poems by Amit Majmudar

Bataan Death March in off-rhymed terza rima, as a nod

to Dante, linebreaks taken out to hide the feat in prose.

Sidebar on dysentery’s role in war. A catalogue

of sexual fantasies aboard the USS Juneau.

The first of five Morehead brothers arrives in Chapter 9:

As Orrin swabs the deck, he has a flashback (Ashland) in

a flashback (Caldwell County, graduation year). But then

cut to Osaka, 1910: Hiroshi baits his line....

Okay, but what’s the takeaway?

Tighten the story. Shrink the cast.

The era of Madcap Fantastic Abundance has passed.

Lobotomized to MFA,

its wanderlust and wonder banished,

it won a Pulitzer and vanished.

Oh what a glorious war we waged on time,

you in your peacock pleats and jasmine braid

and ankle bells portraying a warrior goddess,

me at my laptop redeploying rhyme

like roving arrows on a map of fate.

We fought our Passchendaele, entrenched in bodies,

my dugout deep in yours. We woke up, ate,

went on our morning walks, we made love, played

old board games, ditched our iPhones, stormed the beachhead,

kamikazed straight into the sun

while knowing we would likely never reach it,

while knowing no Great War was ever won,

each night, each decade together one more mission

prolonging this timeline, this lifegiving war of attrition.

Amit Majmudar