Soldier’s Wife

Jackson Sabbagh
| poetry

 

           Village of Chokan, 8th Century A.D.

 

If he returns after drinking his black wine
I-don’t-know-where. . . .

His armor, piled against the plum tree in repose,
puffs out its metal chest, shows off
its medal of blood
which came from a man I cannot know,
like most men.

            There he is—
leaning against the open gate,
dark and less unknown than I’d feared. —No,
those are bamboo chutes bobbing in the wind,
rooted too long to dislodge.

Jackson Sabbagh is an MFA candidate in poetry at the University of Florida. They won the Academy of American Poets College Prize at Sarah Lawrence College. Their poems have appeared in journals such as Word Riot and RUST + MOTH, which nominated them for a Pushcart Prize.

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