Jason Arment served in Operation Iraqi Freedom as a Machine Gunner in the USMC. His work has appeared in Narrative Magazine, Gulf Coast, Lunch Ticket, Chautauqua, The Burrow Press Review (Pushcart nomination) and many more; been anthologized in Proud to Be: Writing by American Warriors, Volumes 2 & 4; and is forthcoming in Zone 3, Duende, New Madrid, Veterans Writing Project, Midwestern Gothic and The Iowa Review. University of Hell Press will publish his memoir Musalaheen in 2017. Jason lives in Denver, where he coordinates the Denver Veterans Writing Workshop with the Colorado Humanities, and can be reached at .
Health
Jason Arment
In country, SOP was ignore everything.
How the radio jammers hundreds of hertz
split the heads of Marines
with a throbbing ache
or the way dust storms
caused sickness so severe
the Corps airlifted patients
to Sweden's neutrality
Now
veterans line the streets
& methadone clinics
seemingly invisible to the public
Back home,
even if we'd
have it otherwise
—ignore everything.
Every Marine a Rifleman
Jason Arment
A well aimed shot
is worth ten
wild ones,
not so with people
Although bullets
& people
are sometimes similar
& made for each other
People can disobey
follow their own way,
a bullet is nothing more
than an empty vessel
Jarhead is a telling euphemism
along with dum-dum round
misfire, hangfire,
& blanks
Jarheads are bullet-catchers
as well as gunslingers,
a moth to flame Mobius strip
that hasn't stopped since 1775
Tube-launched, Optically-tracked, War-guided
Jason Arment
Civilians don't know anything
about missiles, so no surprise
when ISIS started using TOWs
no one cared
An Egyptian destroyer
trolling the Red Sea
broadsided by a
small sun
Made me think of when
I swam in the same waters
with the Israeli Defense Force
where Eilat meets the waves
the memory made remote
by the video of
rocket flare
& blinding impact
When I was in Iraq
the only people with TOWs
were: the U.S. &
allied forces
Now
the situation has changed
from RPGs to TOW missiles,
& ISIS on the rise.
Marine Blues
Jason Arment
The blues
if it were darker
but not bruise black
more like blood on the asphalt
& not the musicians
playing their hearts
out every night
more fevered dream, fetid sweat
The feeling
when all is lost
& not just for a second,
but forever
The crumbling
of rotted wood
underfoot
or callow hearts
Like coming down
off a drug, or
laying out a gun
& writing a note
Mostly the last one
but a little of all of them
because my blues, brother
will drag you from sunlight
The Absence of Dreams
Jason Arment
I miss dreaming
until I skip the meds
& wake up
sweat soaked screaming
In one night-terror
I'll never forget
the squad & I reunited
to patrol stateside streets
We ran into a kid
I used to teach math
at an inner-city
middle school
I maced & beat the 6th grader,
not out of malice, but compulsion.
No idea if
he survived