It is hard to walk into the VA.
\nPresident\u2019s face, larger than life and the
\nVA secretaries smiling blandly.
\nThe American flag proudly centered.
\nA wall full of pamphlets from every group.<\/p>\n
Smiling joyful face at the desk, a new
\none, again, (one face lasted a year). \u201cLast
\nfour please,\u201d I rattled off my social as
\nshe keyed it in. \u201cOh yes sir, your appoint-
\nment is in twenty minutes.\u201d So I sit.<\/p>\n
The older veterans all stare and smile.
\nAvoiding eye contact, so as not to
\ntry to talk lightly about Iraq or hear
\n\u201cthank you for your service\u201d, again. Like we
\never want to be thanked for what we did.<\/p>\n
The things we did over there break us, each
\ndeal with it in our own way. Being
\nthanked brings the wars rushing back. Humpty
\nDumpty can\u2019t be put back together again.
\nBut I can keep faith and tell the story.<\/p>\n
Amongst this, as Odysseus faced
\ntrials coming home, so must we anew.
\nSome never finish the trip, it\u2019s too far.
\nSo I continue on, for them, and
\ntake up this ink pen to blind the cyclops.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It is hard to walk into the VA. President\u2019s face, larger than life and the VA secretaries smiling blandly. The American flag proudly centered. A wall full of pamphlets from every group. Smiling joyful face at the desk, a new one, again, (one face lasted a year). \u201cLast four please,\u201d I rattled off my social … Continue reading VA Waiting Room<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[],"issue":[6876],"class_list":["post-2171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry","issue-6876"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-11 11:17:03","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2171\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2171"},{"taxonomy":"issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue?post=2171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}