A Mother’s War Poems by: Maritza Rivera Cohen PARENTAL ADVISORY: The war becomes real in the next fifteen minutes once you’ve read this book. CONTENTS 1. Expectations 2. They Gave Their Sons 3. Camouflage 4. For Every Mother’s Child 5. Perfect Number 6. Encounter: Two Voices 7. No Why 8. Mother’s Day 9. Stop Loss 10. A Mother’s War 11. Wishful Thinking 12. Semper Fi For our sons and daughters who give us purpose and make us so proud. 1. EXPECTATIONS He was born eager ten weeks too soon under weight and under cooked he hadn’t finished baking. He was scrawny and frail and at 3 pounds, 15 ounces I could hold all of him in just one hand. I went home empty handed without a baby to show worried and waited for him to grow until he too came home a month later. Now like then I worry and wait for him to be discharged this time from a farther and more dangerous place than the hospital where he was born. And like then I am so afraid that something will go terribly wrong. So I pray and pray and pray (that his life was meant for more than war and will be spared). 2. THEY GAVE THEIR SONS How do I prepare to give my child to war without despair or fear? I watch the winter deer meander through the woods and feel the billion pieces of my heart break apart and fall as quietly and cold as snow. The temperature outside has dropped to freezing I must prepare to give my child to war without disdain or tears. The bastards have decided that this battle must be fought but it is not their son’s or daughter’s names that are caught in my throat. I’m not prepared to give my child to war but someone has to. but inside myself it’s colder still. 3. CAMOUFLAGE Green and tan and brown with weapons slung across one shoulder: butt up, muzzle down is the fashion statement for these soldiers. Iraq is their intended runway. Mothers and fathers sisters and brothers sons and daughters are here to see them off to war. They are brave; we are brave. Those whose families are conspicuously absent: quietly mingle; keep to themselves; play video games or iPod tunes pretending. Sometimes laughter erupts then awkwardly subsides. Pacing follows numerous pizza deliveries and trips to the head. There is an orchestrated chaos about all this Cameras, forced smiles and nervous chatter become numbing distractions. At the staging area time melts stings like hot wax on bare skin and after hours of subdued foreboding the buses arrive. We’ve been dreading this moment all day. Troops fall in and with each name called USO packages are handed out until every letter of the alphabet fills the hungry seats. Anguish attacks; we are defenseless. Frantic farewells, tears and exhaust fumes choke the air. The doors close, engines groan and the convoy of buses pulls out leaving hearts like gravel crushed in its path. This is called Deployment. I call it: a mother’s war. 4. FOR EVERY MOTHER'S CHILD The moon will keep a watchful eye on my son while he is so far from home.  The stars will twinkle in his eyes with my prayers for  his safe return.  Ancestors have seen him grow from seed to sturdy oak  and I will gladly grow old and sleep soundly in his shade. (And I will gladly grow old and sleep soundly in his shade). 5. PERFECT NUMBER She is everything to him: angel, demon, mother, mistress, whore. She accompanies him everywhere and he keeps her closer than his shadow. He carries her around muzzle up, butt down with a full magazine stuffed in her belly. She protects him in ways a cross, Star of David or the Azabache he wore as an infant no longer can. He is safe from the evil of foreign eyes when she flashes her #181 like a smile. She is mysterious and magical (a palindromic prime) and I bet she’s the only lucky charm he really needs. 6. ENCOUNTER: TWO VOICES PART I All day long my child had been sick and was finally in bed asleep while I ate a late supper. First I heard a rumbling like that of an approaching train still unseen followed by a shrill whistle then the impact that caved in the roof shattering my world into fragments too small to reassemble. I awakened surrounded by darkness, dust and debris my sick child lost to me forever in the rubble. Strangers found me dazed and disoriented and directed me to a nearby shelter. Others there like me were bewildered, bruised and embittered by such destruction. Porridge, prayers and water sustained us. In the morning we were dispatched to the infirmary, other shelters or back onto the streets to rummage through what was left of our lives. A young man approached me said he knew where I could find safety, lead the way through the chaos into an alley off the main road. We will find a place in heaven if we do this. PART II After the invasion I was guarding my post when two civilians approached the checkpoint from an alley off the main road. It was my duty to say what I’d been trained to say in their language and though the sounds I made were foreign to me they should have deterred them from advancing but didn’t. “Stop or I’ll shoot”, I repeated. PART III We approached a young man in a foreign uniform. I could feel a muffled pounding under the bulky vest I wore when the young man warned us to stop. We continued toward him on a path to heaven our thumbs pressed against the detonator hidden under our vests as he raised and aimed his weapon. We were about to enter the promised land. PART IV I couldn’t tell if they understood what I’d said but since they didn’t stop I raised and aimed my weapon. I was about to do what I’d been trained to. EPILOGUE: This encounter has no happy ending but whatever happens next… matters. 7. NO WHY I read about a woman who recognized her son’s tattoo in a photo on the evening news. An unnamed soldier (she knew it was her son) had been captured and killed at war. She learned about it watching the plasma screen he’d bought for her before he left for war. She hadn’t wanted him to get it (the plasma screen or the tattoo) and now that’s all she’s left of war. 8. MOTHER’S DAY The loss of a child is impossible to bear patriotically. 9. STOP LOSS It doesn’t get easier the second or third time and it’s not the going away but the where and for how long that make our goodbyes so unbearable. If it were anyone else going anywhere else it wouldn’t matter as much; but it’s you going so far from home that makes my heart ache. 10. A MOTHER’S WAR A doorbell moment happens unpredictably to mothers of war. 11. WISHFUL THINKING Hey, Tony Orlando and Dawn tying yellow ribbons around oak trees didn’t do much to end Viet Nam. So I tried red silk ones around our dogwood thinking it would work better for Iraq. I’ve realized that changing colors or trees or wars doesn’t really matter. Only coming home does. 12. SEMPER FI After two long tours of dreading: late night phone calls, the unexpected ringing of doorbells and daily mail deliveries I received our son’s last letter and have been staring at it for hours. I swear I can hear it ticking like the roadside bomb that took his life (or is that my heart throbbing). His friends will gather at a bar somewhere toss back three shots in his honor while my tears smudge the squiggly handwriting on this letter I wish had never arrived I wish had never been mailed that I wish had never been written by our son. Maritza Rivera Cohen is a Viet Nam Era veteran who served as a Commissioned Officer in the Military Intelligence Branch of the US Army. Her daughter also served in the US Army and her son in the US Marine Corps. Maritza has been writing poetry for over 30 years, published her first collection of poetry, About You, in 1998, has read her work in numerous poetry venues and her work has appeared in literary magazines, anthologies and online publications. She is also known in the DC poetry community as the founder of the Mariposa weekly poetry series that ran in College Park, MD from 1999 to 2002. Her latest book of poetry, A Mother’s War, was written to share her thoughts and feelings during her son’s two tours in Iraq and to make the intensity of war a reality for everyone who reads it. Maritza’a poetry appears in Milspeak Memo with her permission. A Mother’s War will be published Memorial Day 2009, and is available through booksellers and the publisher: Word of Mouth Poetry Series P.O. Box 21 Alexandria, VA 22313 ISBN: 978-1-888018-07-3 Word of Mouth is an independent poetry series founded by Stephanie and Kwame Alexander in 2005 Copyright © 2009 by Maritza Rivera Cohen All rights reserved Cover art: Jordan R Cohen Cover printing: Moira McCauley Paper: Pyramid Atlantic Laser Photography: Pyramid Atlantic