Inland Sea

everywhere | ocean lapping
grandfather’s Pacific eyes | the Navy
blue sea | he carried home
as tides

ebbs and flows | cycling
like his drunken stagger | tossed
by the heavy swells | of wheat rippling
the horizon

on land | every sailor
is ghost shipped | and hollow hulled
buoyed by trophies | bayonets
hanging on walls

metal helmet | stamped USN
a bulging barnacle | over the barn door
another with a single star | upturned
for his spittoon

it’s not true | to say he lived
in the Philippines | but he lived with it
on our farm | haunted by an island
in 1945

after dark | distant rifle shot
when the neighbors | felled a coyote
grandpa ran | through waves
up the beach in Luzon

listening | for fire
one hand | reaching for his gun
his eyes | sweeping the shore
for movement

war brides | marry the battle
my grandmother’s | Italian hands
were smoothing sheets | braid
down her back

from behind | her kimono
her black hair | mistaken for enemy status
to the soldier | ripping her dress
gripping her neck

in the bedroom | war babies
are made from wounds | my father
was shrapnel | a memento
of violence

in 1950 | a low crop duster
with rumbling props | grandpa took cover
then lunged from a closet | wrestled her
to the ground again

my uncle | was one more
war crime | conceived somewhere between
Indiana and Manila | either way
it’s all the same.

Lorrie Ness is a poet living in Virginia. Her work has appeared in numerous journals, including Palette Poetry, Typishly, Thrush and others. She has been nominated for Best of the Net Awards in 2019 and 2020 by Sky Island Journal.