Brian Turner

a very distant war but at the same time my grandfather is very quiet never talking about war although I know that he fought as a marine infantryman in World War II so and then I knew my mother would say that when she was young that he would wake up screaming or he would scream in his sleep sometimes and it would frighten her and her mother would tell her you know don't worry he's fighting against the Indians so it made sense to soothe my mom knowing oh it was the movies from the

But how do those things add up into subliminally and different levels of consciousness, whether it's overt or something difficult to understand?

How do they combine within me to give me the point where I'm nice on a contract?

It's difficult.

So it's a long-winded way of saying that's why I started to write that memoir.

Yeah.

Of course, the memoir doesn't answer the question.

Well, it's funny, isn't it?

Right, right.

And you could ask her and you, why Hawaii, why Scotland?

Why, how?

And it certainly wasn't a plan.

Why poetry?

You have a couple books of poetry, right?

Yeah, yeah.

Why write one after you've written, why write the second one after you've written one?

Yeah.

Each one has its own huge series of questions.

Sleeping in Dick Cheney's bed.

it's unnerving how comfortable this is norad watching over the bedroom colorado mule-deer chewing the dawn outside as i dream i'm wading thigh-high into the north platte river wearing rubber waders casting a hand-made flyer with a whip-like graceful sling of the line until i fall back