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The Other Side
- The Other Side
In the First World Peace, Uncle Charley found his mind outside a country asylum, wound home to meet the sister
who always knew he’d survived. Uncle Dom always spoke of the Second World Peace, how he once gave away
a Purple Heart, which never reminded him of anything. And the marchers marched backward, never showing
their backs, unlocked and unloaded every rifle they carried, breaking ranks in every direction. And the smoke and ash
turned back into bone-clothed skin. In Saigon, my father saw fireworks, wondered when peace would end. If only we trimmed
our peace budget, the President says, we might have something to spend on the latest bionic technology, to erase the scars
of peace, since men keep sprouting limbs, and their shrapnel-free faces have a symmetry you only see in times like these. [End Page 126]
Philip Metres is the author and translator of a number of books and chapbooks, including I Burned at the Feast: Selected Poems of Arseny Tarkovsky (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2014), Compleat Catalogue of Comedic Novelties: Poetic Texts of Lev Rubinstein (Ugly Duckling P, 2014), A Concordance of Leaves (Diode, 2013), abu ghraib arias (Flying Guillotine, 2011), To See the Earth (Cleveland State, 2008), and Behind the Lines: War Resistance Poetry on the American Homefront since 1941 (U of Iowa P, 2007). His work has appeared in Best American Poetry, numerous journals and anthologies, and has garnered two nea fellowships, the Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, five Ohio Arts Council Grants, the Beatrice Hawley Award (for the forthcoming Sand Opera), the Arab American Book Award, the Cleveland Arts Prize, the Anne Halley Prize, and a Russian Institute of Translation grant. He is a 2014 Creative Workforce Fellow. The Creative Workforce Fellowship is a program of the Community Partnership for Arts and Culture, supported by the residents of Cuyahoga County through a public grant from Cuyahoga Arts and Culture. He is a professor of English at John Carroll University in Cleveland.
