Randy “Sherpa” Brown
at the Motel Mehtar Lam
When I’d had my fill of war that week,
I buttoned-up in a plywood B-hut hooch
and fell asleep to a “Clash of the Titans” DVD
I’d scrounged from the waiting-area jetsam.
No swimming pool, but there was a grave,
cordoned off, in the middle of the helipad.
In a nightstand drawer, instead of Gideon,
I found someone else’s Bronze Star Medal set.
Later, awakened to a bluster of muffled ghost-chopper wings,
I rolled over–opted not to open my door into the black.
To this day, I do not know whether death
was visiting that night
or just refueling.
Randy “Sherpa” Brown is author of the award-winning 2015 poetry collection “Welcome to FOB Haiku: War Poems from Inside the Wire.” A 20-year retired Iowa Army National Guard veteran with one overseas deployment, he embedded with his former unit as civilian media in Afghanistan, May-June 2011. In addition to producing other Sci-Fi/Fantasy and veterans-lit anthologies, he most recently edited “Cryptids, Kaiju & Corn: Poems and Micro-Stories about Modern Midwest Monsters.”
Visit: linktr.ee/randysherpabrown
Banner Art:
Mehtar Lam, Afghanistan, Photo by Staff Sgt. Ryan Matson,
2nd Brigade Combat Team, 34th Infantry Division, January 14th, 2011
