It's Still Life

Buried at Colleville-sur-Mer

We buried the dead with symmetry.
Set with precision under white crosses.
Très précis, our marked men.
In laylines. In rows, in order
to be called to march on heaven.
Orderly attention arranged.
The conflicted contrast
from how they died; scattered
like celebratory confetti.
It was as if God’s hand
mistook them for wheat,
rubbed them like grain,
then separated from the chaff.
And when they’d hardened
to the bite, when they were brave
and rough enough,
God harvested great swathes
of them from fields and hills,
and returned them to dust
from where they’d come.

© Misky 2016 (photo is the US Normandy Cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer, France, overlooking Omaha Beach. ). Class 3 Assignment: As Uni of Iowa Professor Folsom wrote, “The kinds of oxymoronic reactions that Whitman had toward the war are some of the most difficult to articulate in words—to express how one can both hate and love the same thing, find it beautiful and horrifying, sustaining and devastating.” In words or images, compose a response to an event or experience that invoked this kind of contradiction for you. Consider how craft can call upon contradiction—in form, syntax, diction, metaphor, exposure, or juxtaposition—and employ those elements in a manner most fitting to your experience.