May 2022
Sarah White
sarahwhitepages@gmail.com
Bio Note: This is the last VV submission from New York City, my home for 22 years. Next time I submit, I’ll be at my new residence in South Hadley, Massachusetts, near my son’s new home. My family, like a handful of marbles, is tending to roll into Western Mass.
In 2015, Deerbrook Editions published a book of my poems about war. The first two poems, like the book’s unlikely title, are focused on my mother's dementia. Dos Madres Press is just now bringing out my most recent book, a memoir, The Poem Has Reasons: a story of far love.

My mother lived so long

	that two of her brothers-
in-law fought in the Great War —
Owen, fallen in the Dardanelles,
Allan, scarred by flames 
that consumed his fragile plane.
 
She grieved so long year after year
for her cousin, born at the height
of the First World War, shot at the start
of the Second, mort pour la France,
“instantly, painlessly,” she was told.
 
… long enough to be half-blind
when in 1992 in a nursing home 
the glow and rumble of Desert Storm,
reminded her of a peasant girl
named Joan burned alive in 1431.
 
That was long ago. I was younger
than you. Wars were terrible.
Thank God they don't happen
any more, she said.
Originally published in Wars Don't Happen Anymore: Poems

Enemy of the Teutons

To the old woman, all Germans are evil—
sadistic swine, crack snipers,.
They bark Achtung!, steal 
treasure and children. Grimm.
And she’s not even Jewish.
 
One day Karen arrives from Cologne,
a new attendant at the nursing home,
and brings my blind mother her clothes.
Hearing an accent, the old one screams:
Don’t touch me. You’re German!
 
The new helper takes no offence,
calms Mother down, wins her over.
After that, Germans are still evil
but Beethoven, Brahms,
and Karen are the exceptions.
Originally published in Wars Don't Happen Anymore: Poems

Write Seven Lines on “the Sword is Sharper than the Word”

A plain steel blade made the bayonet lethal.
A simple boulder murdered Abel.
One teen builds IED’s at home.
Another learns to maneuver drones.
 
Want to Make Love, not War ? Good Luck!
Hate takes over the roads like gravel.
Love is as rare as precious metals.
©2022 Sarah White
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