"September 1990"
By Matt Smythe
My first and only Missouri fall
smells of fresh-turned earth,
a must-heavy canvas tent
and my military issued t-shirt
drying after a hard day’s work.
Sunset has retreated completely now.
Dark shadows turn into enemy troops,
then back to logs, bushes and trees.
My eyes are unreliable,
I listen.
Miles away and A-10 flies night
maneuvers 150 feet above tree-line.
Gatling guns roar downrange.
It’s that far away and still that loud.
It’s the night,
darkness makes everything feel closer.
It’s been days since I thought about home.
I stop listening and try to bring back their faces.
Not everything feels closer in darkness.
In five days I’ll be able to see them again-
to open my wall-locker and look
at their pictures taped to the inside of the door.
Five more nights I’ll lie in this foxhole,
identify shadows,
listen to the distant beat in my chest.
Matt Smythe from the Finger Lakes region of western New York. An Army veteran and lifelong outdoorsman, Matt suffers from an inability to sit still. If he’s not in the woods, or on the water, he’s scheming ways to get there. His work has appeared in Free Range American, Gray’s Sporting Journal, the Fly Fish Journal, The Drake, Southern Culture on the Fly, Revive, Midcurrent, TROUT Magazine, and a handful of other non-outdoors-related magazines and literary journals. He recently published a book of poetry with Dead Reckoning Collective titled Revision of a Man.
Follow Matt’s blog, Glorious Mayhem here.
What’s happening at VetRep…
Listen to our latest episode with Kimberly Evans on the Savage Wonder Podcast, where we interview incredibly talented musicians, artists, writers, and theater professionals, who also happen to be veterans.
Join us every Saturday through June for Gnit, by Will Eno, a cautionary tale about, among other things, how the opposite of love is laziness. Gnit is a faithful, unfaithful, and willfully American reading of Henrik Ibsen’s Peer Gynt, a 19th century Norwegian play famous for all the wrong reasons. Settle in with a delicious mocktail and dessert, and be sure to get your tickets early or they might just sell out.