Clamor by Elyse Fenton

Clamor by Elyse Fenton

Gratitude

Wreckage was still smoldering on the airport road
when they delivered the soldier- beyond recognition,

seeing god's hands in the medevac's spun rotors-
to the station's gravel landing pad. By the time you arrived

there were already hands fluttering white flags of gauze
against the ruptured scaffolding of ribs, the glistening skull, and no skin

left untended, so you were the one to sink the rubber catheter tube.
When you tell me this over the phone hours later I can hear rotors

scalping the tarmac-gray sky, the burdenless lift of your voice.
And I love you more for holding the last good flesh

of that soldier's cock in your hands, for startling his warm blood
back to life. Listen. I know the way the struck chord begins

to shudder, fierce heat rising into the skin of my own
sensate palms. That moment just before we think

the end will never come and then
the moment when it does.

~~~Page 3, Clamor by Elyse Fenton

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Clamor is a collection of poems. Elyse Fenton's young husband was deployed in Iraq following the 9/11. Here she writes about her experience of living so far away from him. This is a collection of love poems where a young wife is yearning for her husband who is living in a war zone. Her poems have an heightened sense which is rare for an debut poet. 

She might refer the war but her poetry is filled with longing for her husband. As a war widow, she pines for her lover, her husband. None of her poems are mushy. She depicts the war, the separation, her love in such a way that we too can see her raw emotions. 

Her command of the language is so good that one is simply pulled into it. Deep, powerful, hard hitting and yet so beautiful. Excellent imagery used throughout her poetry and metaphors are wonderful. Such a rich collection. I am holding on to this book of poems for as long as I can.  

After The Blast

It happened again just now, one word
snagging like fabric on a barbed fence.

Concertina wire. You said: I didn't see the body
hung on concertina wire. This was after the blast.

After you had stood in the divot, both feet
in the dust's new mouth and found no one alive.

Just out of the shower, I imagine
a flake of soap crusting your dark jaw, the phone

cradled like a hand on your bare cheek.
I should say: love. I should say: go on.

But I'm stuck on concertina—
the accordion's deep inner coils, bellows,

lungful of air contracting like a body caught

in the agony of climax.

Graceless, before the ballooning rush

of air or sound. The battering release.

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Poetry book 1 read for the Dive Into Poetry Reading Challenge 2014.