GREETINGS FROM FORT McCLELLAN, 1944-1995

by Laura Shovan

Image source: Transition Force, US Army Garrison, Fort McClellan, Alabama

This is a really beautiful camp.
I found George in excellent health.

Love,_____

                                    Please help.

I was stationed at Fort McClellan.

I have developed a symptom of passing out.

Doctors called it "Syncope".

None of them could figure out

what caused it. 

Hi my name is: _____

I went through Basic training

in Echo 1 company. We had to go through

that building they called the Gas Chamber.

Does anybody know what type of gas

or chemical was in there?

I want to hear from you.

We were exposed to toxic substances,

big time. The McClellan Cocktail:

depleted Uranium, Sarin gas, mustard gas,

and let's not forget that old standby,

Agent Orange.

                                    I drove track vehicles

through dust and mud, unknowing the danger.

I taught troops to make the smoke

that covered the base, was told Fog Oil SGF2

was harmless. We breathed it in for hours.

I went thru the live nerve agent chamber.

They drew blood to check us but never

told us why.

                                    I was face down

in toxic-smelling stuff on the firing range.

They sprayed stuff to keep the bugs away.

They sprayed us in the "gas chamber,"

said I had "sensitive skin" when I broke out

in weeping blisters and dizzy spells.

We were "just women." It's a damn shame

they couldn't tell us what we were

crawling around in.

                                    Tell you more

when I get home.

Author’s note: This is a found poem. The italics in this poem are taken from a used postcard, cancelled in 1944. All of the stanzas not italicized are taken directly from blogs and internet postings by veterans who trained at Fort McClellan. I deleted a word here and there, but have not changed the vets’ language.

Editor of Little Patuxent Review, Laura Shovan was a finalist for the 2012 Rita Dove Poetry Award. Her chapbook, Mountain, Log, Salt and Stone, won the Harriss Poetry Prize. She edited Life in Me Like Grass on Fire: Love Poems and co-edited Voices Fly: An Anthology of Exercises and Poems from the Maryland State Arts Council Artist-in-Residence Program, for which she teaches. In January and February, 2013, Laura is blogging 44 poems inspired by antique postcards at www.authoramok.com..

MAYBE SANDY IS ANOTHER NAME FOR KARMA

by Ngoma

some say they should have
named her karma
i'm not sure
if she was a conspiracy theory,
or an act of god
bible thumpers called her
a revelation
a halloween trick or treat
a politician's opportunity disguised as disaster
some claim it was punishment for sin
but churches were flooded too
steeples and oak trees in the wind
proof that global warming deniers can't ignore
we could say I told you so
and maybe this is a wake up call
as roller coaster rides are buried in the flood
and marathoners take up hotel space
while many victims have no food
or a place to lay their heads
bodies still being found
in flooded burnt out homes
with no escape by subways
filled with water like underground cesspools
as Jamie Curtis talks about survival kits on Jay Leno
and tells us to donate money to the Red Cross
yet to show up in Mount Vernon
with gas lines around the block
for gas stations that are empty
meanwhile the major news media
act as though disaster only happens in america
as the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Cuba
are ignored by major media
and there is no FEMA to guarantee votes for Obama on election day
suddenly we see what it may be like to live in a 3rd world country
where lack of gas and electricity is an everyday experience
and half the world is a disaster area
waiting for a relief concert to raise funds
that would not be needed if the wealth was redistributed
and warnings of global warming had been heeded


Ngoma is a performance poet, multi-instrumentalist, singer/songwriter and paradigm shifter who for over 40 years has used culture as a tool to raise sociopolitical and spiritual consciousness through work that encourages critical thought. A former member of Amiri Baraka's Spirit House Movers and Players and of the Contemporary Freedom Song Duo, Serious Bizness, Ngoma weaves poetry and songs that raise contradictions and search for a just and peaceful world. Ngoma was the Prop Slam Winner of the 1997 National Poetry Slam Competition in Middletown, CT and has been published in African Voices Magazine, Long Shot Anthology, The Underwood Review, Signifyin' Harlem Review, Bum Rush The Page/Def Jam Anthology, Poems On The Road To Peace (Yale Press) and Let Loose On The World: Celebrating Amiri Baraka at 75. He was featured in the PBS Spoken Word Documentary "The Apro-Poets" with Allen Ginsberg. Ngoma has curated and hosted the poetry slam at the Dr.Martin Luther King Jr. Family Festival of Environmental and Social Justice (Yale University, New Haven, CT) since 1996. He was a selected participant in the Badilisha Poetry Xchange in Cape Town, South Africa in fall of 2009. In December of 2011 he was initiated as an Obatala Priest in Ibadan, Nigeria.