Early On
Milton Jordan
February 27, 2022
He pointed out my nickname written
on onion skin my brother sent from some
unnamed base in an unmentioned country.
My brother, Daddy claimed, sent the letter
to me and he read aloud the words I might
recognize after several such letters.
Most days he read from the Morning News
and I tried to speak the strange names of towns
he would point out with a Chesterfield
between his fingers. Rob’s base is near there.
He works on motors to keep airplanes flying.
My brother, Robbie, came home from that war,
we thought uninjured, and mustered out
at the Smith County Center where we met him
to begin the trip back to Teague and a world
that exposed injuries we had not seen.
Milton Jordan lives with Anne in Georgetown, Texas. His chapbook, The Amberman Poems, is out from Kallisto Gaia Press. A collection, A Forest for the Trees, is forthcoming from Backroom Window Press.
