Excerpts from the Anthologies

Excerpts from "On the Homefront: Volume 2" the second anthology from Families of Veterans Writing Workshop, September 2015.
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Anywhere But Here
by Amanda Cerreto

He tries to look at the camera; behind it is a friend and brother busting his chops, wanting the Colonel to be captured in his battle rattle. But the sun is blinding, and though he’s been in Kuwait for a few months, he’s still not accustomed to it. 
...
​He’s annoyed and his smile clearly says “get this over with.” But he figures he should let the men under his command have some fun before the worst begins. 
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All About Amine
by Kareem Brown
You hate me. Your friends hate me. Your wife and kids hate me. Your dog hates me. 
You should all be a lot more respectful of me because without me, there is no you. 
You breathe me day in and day out. I immerse myself in the fiber of the clothes you wear, the linens you sleep on and under. 
I make your air fit to breathe but you can barely stand the smell of me and you know what, I don’t care.
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Hairline
by Ekaterina Quinones

From the back seat of our family car, a square Chrysler one of my friends dubbed “the blue shopping cart,” I witness the evolution of my father’s bald spot. It started small, a light brown patch peeking through a forest of black. It grew as I grew, becoming less of a contrast as the surrounding halo of hair thinned and faded away. When he went too long between haircuts, his hair was like the rest of him was back then: Big. The car would rock like a boat when he slid in and out of it.
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The Collage
by Julie Geisler

It’s about 2 feet by 3 feet, with a stark, gray metal frame around it. Within it are about 40 small black and white images, closely cropped and laid out in a very deliberate yet free-flowing pattern. From a distance, it looks like old newspaper images. Upon closer inspection, however, we see a world of extremes…life during wartime.
It takes time to truly see them all.
Excerpts from "On the Homefront" the first anthology from Families of Veterans Writing Workshop, September 2014.

Just a Paperclip
by Eleanor Cleary

Sandy, dark, and warm; it’s only 102? he laughs. Cool for this place, he thinks....he is in Iraq. A place so far away from where he has ever been. Sitting at his makeshift desk, in a tent. Sounds of mortars in the background, planes landing, taking off, people speaking in the distance. This is it, he thinks, I might never see her again. He shuffles papers as he waits, waiting for the sound of another plane. A small sound goes off when the plane arrives. Nothing to do until he hears that. More boys, more men and women coming, families left behind...I have to get away, he thinks, but how...? 

Holding a paperclip, he starts to think of her. Everything fades, sounds, people, even where he sits. He starts to mold the paperclip into a shape. 

Mothballed
by Laura Vookles

At first I took little notice of the coat. A massive thing, it must have weighed 8 pounds, but unflashy darkest navy with brass buttons and a little black braid. But after all the glamor, there it was, my Granddaddy’s Navy officer overcoat—in perfect condition because he never got shipped out. World War II ended. It’s ridiculous for a 5-foot 4-inch woman to try on an 8-pound coat for a 6-2 man, but I did. It was like wearing armor. The shoulders stood out stiff, as if they were padded. It was the 80s, so that was OK. Can I have it? I asked my Grandma.

Angela's Story
by Laura Rossi

Every mother longs for that idealized day, in the not too distant past, when her children were once again little and the thought of them as adults is just beyond her grasp. Angela had days when she wanted, more than anything else in the world, to go back to a time, many years ago, when her family was whole again. Gianni, her eldest, the brilliant boy, would laugh again, his eyes clear and his mind not yet troubled by demons. Ralph, also brilliant, played stickball in the streets, calling up to his mother that he would be home soon, just a little longer. And Luigi, my father, the golden-haired baby born in America, played contentedly in the little kitchen on Edison Avenue in the Bronx. Luigi was excited when his father Frank came home from his carpentry job. There was the family meal, and then music making as Ralph strummed the mandolin and Angela sang.