Hi everyone! Since we had poems assigned for both our most recent class and the next, I thought I’d share one from another course I’m currently taking—“Beneath the Perseids” by Roger Reeves. I would be curious to hear anyone else’s opinions 🙂

“Raw cotton on the road appears as the dead
Appear in us, to us, slightly bucking

Unbidden yet called, not speaking per se
But not not speaking, their scent on our hands

Because we lifted a stone from the blood-
Less river, pressed its exile to our eye. I,

I did not want to begin with the dead,
Their urgent dust and disquisitions, their be’s

Being emperor and everywhere, but my hands,
My hands led me into the road, to pull

At the cotton matted to the fresh tar,
Forget the stars wasting themselves across the sky.

I was there for waste, for the Gorgon’s head
Held in Perseus’s hand, for the sweat

Of stars sliding across his sword, the winged
Stallion bursting forth from the Gorgon’s blood.

Blood and corpse fill the sky. Rawest cotton
Gauzes the black wounds of the screaming road. I!”

I felt that this poem aligns perfectly with our current exploration of the intersection between race and war. It not only employs vivid techniques to portray the chaos of violence—through fleeting, almost rhythmic flashes reminiscent of All Quiet on the Western Front—but also delves into the complex aftermath of racial destruction, examining how people of color must “accept” or, more accurately, “forge” peace (I use the word forge intentionally, as “find” fails to capture the active, often painful process of rebuilding after such devastation). I believe Reeves illustrates how the beauty and pain of humanity are inseparable, as moments of healing remain haunted by echoes of past brutality. Viewed through a racial lens, this tension mirrors the enduring scars of racism—violence rooted in history yet still shaping the present. In this way, I find that the poem resonates with the tragic, complex, and cautiously “hopeful” ending of Not Only War, where two men are, in a sense, forged together. This moment may reflect not only how Montie endures—and, in some ways, adapts to—the world around him, where people of color are often forced to navigate or yield to white privilege, but also how the lingering echoes of racism persist even within moments of adaptation and hope.