Beth Dulin
My Dreams Are Full of Dead Men
For Joe O’Connor 1941 – 2020
And I feel like I’ve had my fair share of staring
into expensive wooden boxes at well-dressed bodies
with waxy faces, just rubber masks of those
I once knew and loved.
And you’re quarantined in a hospital bed
in a city that used to be my home
And there’s nothing I can do
but pray, set spells, and try
to reach you to say,
You can’t go now.
You have more to give us.
You survived Vietnam for God’s sake.
When you were asked at your poetry reading
if you kept a journal of the time you were there,
you said, No.
I had one thing on my mind
and that was to live.
—Submitted on 05/27/2020
Beth Dulin‘s poems have appeared in The American Journal of Poetry and in the anthology Bay to Ocean 2019: The Year’s Best Writing from the Eastern Shore Writers Association (Eastern Shore Writers Association, 2019), edited by Gregg Wilhelm. A graduate of Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts at The New School, Dulin lives on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Online at bethdulin.com.
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