Service

Poems

Bruce Lack

• Publisher: Texas Tech University Press
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9780896729216
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

What Bruce Lack offers in the poems in Service is truth—complex, ambiguous, paradoxical, contradictory, impossible—about the experiences of a Marine fighting the Iraq War and the jarring transition that comes with returning home to find the war reduced to background noise for a remote civilian population. Bruce Lack's forceful, authentic poetry confronts the human cost of sending young men and women to fight a war of questionable justification against an insurgency unbound by rules of engagement. Lack's poems engage honestly with the frustration of fighting an elusive, ruthless enemy, the guilt of surviving when others do not, and the residual anger that may never leave the generation of veterans of the War on Terror. Written in the voice of the Marine but directed toward and accessible to the civilian, Service is a book that seeks to close the communication gap between the two.

Acknowledgments

My sincerest gratitude goes to the men and women of United States Marine Corps, 9th Communications Battalion, Alpha Company who served in Operation Iraqi Freedom II in all its permutations from 2003–2007. And of course, the entire community of my fellow veterans: I hope it’s clear that this book is for you. Welcome home.

I would like to thank the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan—most notably and in no particular order: Laura Kasischke, Linda Gregerson, Lorna Goodison, and Keith Taylor. I would also like to especially thank Gala Mukomolova, Claire Skinner, Tina Richardson, and Airea Matthews for going above and beyond the call of duty in rendering support and critical advice in the completion of this book.

“Rules of Engagement Pop Quiz” owes an obvious debt, I think, to Nick Lantz’s brilliant poem “Will There Be More Than One ‘Questioner’?”

“In Heaven There Are No Doors” owes a similar, though less obvious, debt—beyond just the epigraph—to William Olsen’s poem “This Heaven”

“FNG,” “Hadji,” and “Get Some” won Second Place in the Winning Writers’ War Poetry Contest, 2010

“No Applicable Regulations” was an Honorable Mention in the Winning Writers’ War Poetry Contest, 2011.

A version of “Our War” won the Theodore Roethke Prize in at the University of Michigan in 2012. It was also published in Michigan Quarterly Review.

An excerpt of this book won a Jule and Avery Hopwood Award for poetry at the University of Michigan in 2013.

“David Gomez: El Paso, Texas” appeared in the Rufous City Review.

I

FNG

This is your rack—keep it made and sleep on top of the covers. This is your dresser; this, your wall locker. Keep them locked. There’s only one thief around here: everyone else is just trying to get their shit back. This is the shop. Be here tomorrow morning dressed to run. If you fall out of a run, God help you. This is how to cut your own hair. This is how to roll your sleeves. This is how to blouse your boots. This is h...

Table of contents

• Contents
• Introduction
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author