Half-Asleep in Daddy's War
by Brooke McKinney
And all our dreams will roll toward the hunt,
some half-asleep dogs mingling behind doors.
My family swallows a habit of barbiturates—
the old spores of war, last years of crumbling
leaves. The wind comes back for us. It stalks.
Whose lungs cracked open in a dream wheezing?
What kind of wind goes off wheezing?
Half-asleep dogs come out of doors to hunt.
Our dream comes back for us. It stalks.
My family keeps a habit of closing doors,
memories of Vietnam come back crumbling
and years have a way of keeping us on barbiturates.
This dream is a body full of barbiturates.
How do sleeping dogs die without wheezing?
We bring back to the dark a habit of crumbling
lungs half-asleep after returning from the hunt.
To believe this family can still walk through doors,
smelling the odor of war, its moldy body. It stalks.
And all of memory will follow us dead. It stalks.
We can’t help but beg for our barbiturates
and now the family must lock all their doors
or else nothing is free from the wheezing.
The wind finds a way to carry us back to hunt
as dogs go off again into a dream that’s crumbling.
We can’t keep us here in a body still crumbling.
There’s a love that war stole and it’s here. It stalks.
The same way the dogs dig up bones from the hunt
and, no, we can’t stop our family tradition of barbiturates.
But don’t we lie down sometimes to feel the wheezing?
Sometimes we rise again and open a few doors.
The wind has brought something to our doors—
A memory stacked memory, and oh, its crumbling.
Will silence come and take away this wheezing?
The family thinks the war is gone. It’s back. It stalks.
We think we are safe because we are fed by barbiturates
so let’s go now into the mind and bring back the hunt.
Wheezing, it sounds like the opening of doors
and we forget the crumbling that wakes us to hunt.
We hold on to our barbiturates—afraid of what stalks.
Brooke McKinney is a poet and writer from South Georgia. She is the recipient of two Academy of American Poets Awards and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Hollins University. Her work has appeared in numerous literary journals. Recently, she received a scholarship to the Sewanee Writers' Conference for her memoir about a thirteen-year journey with her bulldog Max. She lives with two dogs, Jane and Arlo, and a cat named Blue.