War Memories
Barry Yeoman



I remember
a musty basement in my childhood,
a naked light bulb
illuminating a furnace,
a small child's basketball
and a little rim
mounted on an old dusty cabinet
used to store house paint.

I shot basket after basket
in that stark space
bouncing the ball
and shooting it through
that little hoop.

There was a washer and dryer
that the ball
bounced off of occasionally
making a deep metal drum sound
and there was a pile
of dirty clothes
and miscellaneous objects
being stored in that little space
which was my sanctuary
where I shot and shot
the ball over and over again.

There were wooden steps
leading upstairs to the kitchen
of that little double
we lived in on Warder Street.

It was the 60's
and I was just a child
and everyone said PEACE
and held up two fingers
and I was told to stop doing that
and the only thing I knew
about Vietnam
was from the combat clips
on the evening news
with Walter Cronkite.

I was always told
to leave the room
though I could still hear
machine gun fire
and the reports of body counts.

And it must have been winter
because the black and white television
threw ghostly dancing shadows
on the dark walls
and we all know exactly
how that war turned out.

About the author:
Barry Yeoman is originally from Springfield, Ohio and currently lives in London, Ohio. His work has appeared, or is forthcoming in Vagabonds Anthology, Futures Trading, Danse Macabre, Harbinger Asylum, Red Fez, Lost Coast Review, Crack the Spine, Burningword Literary Journal, Two Hawks Quarterly, Broad River Review, Soundings Review and The Rusty Nail, , among others. He was a finalist for the 2014 Rash Award in Poetry hosted by Broad River Review. You can read more of his published work here.