Christmas, 1996

I wrote this in 1996 at the beginning of a revision process that started in Mary's wonderful class. This conversation with Bruce inspired me to go deeper. And for that I thank him and my other guides along the way: friends and fellow writers. And Ted, who is the best guide.

In a room lit up with a Christmas tree
and a brand new Barbie Movie Theater,
Bruce took me to Vietnam.
To firebase Snuffy and the triple canopy jungle,
To Cambodia and back.

He was the skinny boy, 115 pounds after malaria,
who celebrated his twenty-first birthday in country.
He showed me his scar,
Claymore shrapnel still inside his shoulder,
And gently named the bronzed boys
mugging for the camera on the day they died

The children ran around the room,
pulling us together, binding up the wounds that never heal:

“Every morning when I look in the mirror,” he said,
“I wonder why I lived and they died.”

Susan Moger

Iraq War and Vietnam Vets

Interesting article in the Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/19/AR2006061901400.html

Suppressing Fire…won’t.
—Murphy’s Law for Grunts

Novel-Tease!

GRACE AT WAR is an 80,000-word literary/commercial novel.
During the explosive summer of 1970, sixteen-year-old Grace, reeling from a home-front trauma of her own, enlists in her combat-veteran brother’s flashback-fueled mission to find answers about the rape of an American nurse in Vietnam. On this mission Grace is ambushed by the rapist, stripped of her illusions, and ultimately forced to find her true soldier's heart in order to save her brother and herself.

GRACE AT WAR recently won first prize in the Maryland Writer’s Association Novel Contest, in the category, Mainstream/Literary.

Brother War

Home he came
Kicked down the door
Swore his name
Was Brother War.

Day and night
He begged for more,
“Light, oh, light,”
Cried Brother War.

Horrors cease
Deaths haunt no more.
Sister Peace
Saves Brother War.

Susan Moger


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